MANSFIELD – The day started like any other that Oct. 23 in 1990. Gary Hobbs was working his usual Tuesday night shift of 3 to 11 p.m. for the Mansfield police department.
By Brian Blackwell
Staff writer
MANSFIELD – The day started like any other that Oct.
23 in 1990. Gary Hobbs was working his usual Tuesday night shift of 3
to 11 p.m. for the Mansfield police department.
At 9:20 p.m., Hobbs was accompanying a parole
officer to issue a probation warrant for the arrest of Todd Bass.
However, Bass resisted the arrest and fatally wounded the parole officer.
Bass then fired six shots at Hobbs.
Hobbs retaliated, delivering nine rounds. He
suffered only a minor wound to his wrist and missed a week of work.
The felon was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder.
Fourteen years later, Hobbs said he reached a point in his life of personal misery and emptiness.
He then visited Southside Baptist Church in
Mansfield on June 16, 2004. It was the first time Hobbs had darkened
the doors of a church building.
Four days later, during the Sunday morning service, Hobbs accepted Christ as his personal Savior.
“Everything changed from that point,” he said. “It’s
amazing how you can walk into a building all depressed with no peace
and come out a totally different person.”
Five months later, on Nov. 7, 2004, Hobbs heard
then-Southside Baptist Pastor Troy Terrell preach about forgiveness.
“The Lord spoke to me and, after the service was
over, I told the pastor that God was revealing lots of hatred that was
built inside me,” Hobbs recalled.
Two weeks later, Hobbs visited the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and sat face-to-face with Bass.
“I told him of the change in my life and that I
didn’t have a problem with him anymore,” Hobbs explained. “He stared at
the ground for a few moments and looked up at me with tears running
down his eyes.
“I then heard the most sincere apology I had ever
heard,” Hobbs continued. “From then on, there were no hard feelings
between us.”
After their meeting Hobbs toured Angola, which he knew had a reputation as a violent prison.
“Wherever I went on the tour, I experienced nothing
but a friendly reception from the prisoners,” Hobbs explained. “I
didn’t feel threatened or hear any foul language. Moral rehabilitation
has changed their lives.”
Once known as the bloodiest prison in the United
States, the Angola prison has experienced a revival of sorts since
Warden Burl Cain instituted moral rehabilitation.
Moral rehabilitation is an approach that utilizes religious organizations to help inmates change.
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has been a
vital part of Cain’s moral rehabilitation philosophy. Since 1995, the
Southern Baptist seminary has offered extension classes at the prison.
Cain attributes the seminary program as a primary
reason for the decreased violence rate at Angola. Prison officials
report the number of inmates involved in an assault at the prison has
decreased from 10.4 percent of the prisoners in 2001 to 7.4 percent in
2004.
After the tour concluded, Hobbs and Terrell met with
Cain. The warden asked why the men had traveled to Angola.
“During our talk, Warden Cain mentioned that while
Angola had all the funds they needed for their religious programs, the
Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel needed money
to construct a chapel inside their prison. My pastor said we could
raise $150,000.”
Within 45 days, Southside Baptist Church members and others from the community raised more than $180,000.
Hobbs said that $150,000 was presented in March 2005
to the Louisiana Prison Chapel Foundation for the construction of a
700-seat chapel inside the LCIW prison walls. Construction on the
chapel should be complete in six to eight months.
Twenty-one members from Southside Baptist Church
traveled to the South Louisiana women’s prison for the chapel’s
groundbreaking ceremony in January. The Shreveport Times reported that
the members received a standing ovation for their fundraising efforts.
“While the labor to build the chapels is free due to
prisoners building the facilities, the cost of materials can’t be done
without help,” Hobbs explained. “Throughout the years, we have seen
rehabilitation programs that utilize the Bible can change prisoners.
“If you change the prisoners and they are released,
then they may have a positive affect on the rest of their families,” he
continued. “In turn, those family members will not resort to a life a
crime.”
Terrell echoes the thought.
“The only way to change a person is when Jesus
enters his or her heart,” he explained. “By building the chapels in the
women’s prisons, we are breaking lots of generational curses.
Statistics show that children of prisoners have a higher chance of
going to prison.
“If the bloodiest prison in America can become the most-evangelized prison, anything is possible.”