Christian music singer Steven Curtis Chapman says Nashville shooting victim was ‘amazing person’

Christian music singer Steven Curtis Chapman said Nashville school shooting victim Katherine Koonce, who was the head of the private Christian school, would “move towards, step into trouble, pain, hard things” in order to help others.

Chapman, the most awarded Christian artist ever, spoke to Anderson Cooper about his close friend in an interview for CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” on Wednesday.

Koonce was one of the six victims of a school shooting on Monday at The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville for preschool through sixth grade students.

The 60-year-old Koonce was killed along with two other adults and three 9-year-old students.

The loss of Koonce hit Chapman and his family hard, he said. Chapman lost his youngest daughter, 5-year-old Maria, whom he and his wife Mary Beth Chapman adopted, in a driveway accident in 2008. Afterward, Koonce lent them a helping hand.

“When we lost our younger daughter Maria in a very tragic way, our son Will in particular was carrying a very, very heavy weight,” Chapman said. He continued to explain how Koonce became a “mentor, friend, confidante, she was all of those things, and teacher.”

“As hard and as awful as that story was for us, she ran towards it,” Chapman continued.

Chapman said Koonce’s supernatural power was kindness. He added that when he and his wife first found out about what was happening at the school, he recalled his wife saying, “I know her well enough to know that she was probably doing everything she could to change this story, to stop this thing from happening, to talk to this person, whatever she could do.”

The five-time Grammy Award winning artist said he is clinging on to the hope of seeing those he has lost again.

“I really believe it’s not wishful thinking to say I know we’re going to see her again, we’re going to see our daughter again, and that’s the hope that keeps us moving forward,” he said.

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