Father Christopher Shepherd-Smith began his missionary life at Saint Paul’s Mission. On February 6, 1977, he planned to leave the mission, but due to a dead battery in his motorcycle, he could not leave as planned and instead decided to stay the night at Musami. Sadly, his decision turned out to be a fatal one.
On February 6, 1977, nationalist guerillas arrived at the mission, rounded up the white staff (which also included five Dominican sisters), and took them a short distance away. In the words of Father Dunstan Myerscough, a priest who survived by throwing himself to the ground when the shooting began: “Finally, three of them turned on us and raised their guns…we didn’t know they were going to shoot us until the firing started…when the firing stopped I looked up and saw that the other seven were dead and that there was nothing I could do for them.”Father Christopher Shepherd-Smith was just 34 years-old.
