3 Arrested in Priest’s Kidnaping, Shooting : Crime: Russian Orthodox cleric from Philadelphia wounded by carjackers survives after playing dead. Two men, teen boy taken into custody.

Police have arrested three people, including a 15-year-old boy, who they allege abducted a Russian Orthodox priest, drove him to Camden, N.J., and shot him in the back.

The Rev. Mark Schinn survived, but said he was unable to fathom the callousness of his assailants.

“Well, Father, I guess the Lord will have to forgive us now,” one of the assailants said with a laugh as he walked away after the shooting Thursday, Schinn recalled.

“I played dead and waited for the sound of them leaving,” he said. “Then after two or three minutes I slowly turned my head to make sure they were gone.”

Jose Casiano, 23, Alfredo DeJesus, 20, and the teen-ager, whose identity police withheld because of his age, were arrested and charged in Camden with aggravated assault and robbery. Police allege that the three Camden residents also stole Schinn’s wallet and the $80 it contained.

The suspects also face charges of kidnaping, and Camden Police Lt. Joe Richardson said he expects additional charges to be filed in New Jersey. “We have to consider this a carjacking and we could call it attempted murder,” he said.

Schinn, a squat, balding man with thick glasses and a long black-and-gray beard, returned home Friday after treatment at a Camden hospital. He said the pain from his wounds had diminished to a dull ache.

With blood from the wound soaked through his bandages and shirt, the 48-year-old cleric recalled the attack the night before as he returned home from visiting a hospitalized parishioner. He had just left his van near the rectory at St. Andrews Russian Orthodox Church.

“They hit me in the head with a gun,” he said. “They were shouting at me and then they pushed me into the back of the van, threw a blanket on top of me and one of them got on top of me.

“They were driving around and talking about a place to kill me,” he said. “They knew I was a priest. . . . They were laughing and whooping and having a grand time. My killing would have been the icing on the cake.”

The assailants drove him to Camden, just across the Delaware River, dumped him on the roadside and shot him.

Schinn, bleeding from where the bullet entered his back over the shoulder blade and from where it exited his shoulder, pulled himself to his feet and walked.

“I’m a priest from Philadelphia and I’ve just been shot. Can you please call an ambulance?” Schinn asked the man who opened the door at a nearby home.

Within minutes, Camden police arrested two young men and a boy in Schinn’s 9-year-old van. Inside the van, police found three handguns and a sawed-off shotgun, Richardson said.

The priest, who has led the 180 parishioners of St. Andrews for the past decade, said he has no plans to leave the city.

“This could have happened to anyone, anywhere, at any time,” Schinn said.