An LDS Bishop in Visalia, California, was murdered at the ward meetinghouse by a man nobody seems to know. No motive has been established.

LDS bishops are lay clergy, donating at least 30 hours [my estimate] a week to the members of their congregations, called wards. They really live the Savior's teaching that leadership involves service. Besides conducting committee meetings, bishops also conduct annual interviews with young members in the ward, with young men prior to being ordained to the priesthood or advanced. They also interview members to determine worthiness to enter the church's temples, where the highest ordinances of the church, including marriage for time and eternity are performed along with baptisms and other ordinances for the dead, are performed.

It was while doing interviews of this sort that Bishop Clay Sannar was shot and killed at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel on Tulare Avenue in Visalia by Kenneth James Ward from Modesto, California, on Sunday afternoon.

A note on the organization of the church: local congregations are called 'wards' which originated as both a political and religious term in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois which was established and built by member of the LDS church in the late 1830s before being abandoned in the 1840s upon ultimatum by enemies of the church. "Ward" had the same meaning that it has in Chicago, New Orleans and other cities. The same practice was followed in Salt Lake City and other Mormon settlements after they arrived in the areas that are now in Utah, Idaho, Arizona and Nevada. Later, after secular governments took over, the church continued to use the geographical division of Wards, but they now apply to church organization. A number of wards comprises a Stake, which is an allusion to a tent stake from a Biblical verse which compares the kingdom of God to the tents used by the Semitic peoples of the Middle East, which were set up with a center pole or stake and then stretched out into different chambers held up and in place by other poles (stakes) and ropes attached to smaller stakes driven into the ground.

Today, the church is established around the world and divided into Areas and Regions. The officers of the church are Apostles, who comprise the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelves, the Quorums of Seventy. There is also an Office of the Presiding Bishop, which conducts the day to day financial and real estate operations of the church, including the welfare system of the church, under the supervision of the Twelve and the First Presidency.