The day after the attack, Smith was back in the church, preaching his Sunday sermon, during which he told the congregation what had happened. He read from the book of Isaiah: "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall."
I've often heard police complain that today's youth don't understand the value of human life. Smith didn't just agree; he said it's worse than that. "The old people don't understand the value of life," he said. "No sir, they don't."
Smith then recalled seeing a story on the television news about a pastor who was killed; he couldn't remember where. (He might have been referring to a visiting pastor who was killed Saturday in a Kentucky church.)
He said he thought he could have been killed Saturday as well; that's why he didn't run after the young man, or activate the car alarm from his key remote before tossing it to the floor. He couldn't make sense of killing a man of God. "To kill a pastor," Smith said. "I mean, that person is your last hope."
That brought me to two final questions.
I asked Smith if he could identify the young man.
"I might and I might not be able to," he answered, pausing, as if I had backed him into an impossible corner.
"We have a devastating situation in our city," he continued. "I cannot handle it. You cannot handle it. The police cannot handle it. Now I'm in a situation, 'What would I do?' Do you not know the Crips and Bloods are having initiation ceremonies this month? Do you not know about the stop-snitching thing? If you go to court and you testify against someone, you might be able to make it back to your car alive. But you might not."
I asked Smith what should happen to the young man.
Without a hint of hesitation and with firm conviction, he said: "He should go to jail."
The preacher who has spent his life chasing God didn't chase after the youth on Saturday and might not chase him into prison. "I'm chasing after him in spirit," Smith said, "so that God might find his heart."
