Thanks for reading some of the latest features about area people and events.  

To view every page and read every word of The Kenmare News each week,
subscribe to our ONLINE EDITION!

 

Armed robber strikes during church mass

“I was scared, having the barrel two feet from my body,” Desire’e Steinberger said as she described the armed robbery during Mass at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Ray Saturday night.

11/06/13 (Wed)

Kenmare woman in the congregation at Ray

By Caroline Downs

“I was scared, having the barrel two feet from my body,” Desire’e Steinberger said as she described the armed robbery during Mass at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Ray Saturday night.

“Father Benny was about halfway through his homily and this man walked in,” she said. “He said, ‘Stop the sermon.’”

Steinberger, the daughter of John and Pam Steinberger of Kenmare and the nutritionist for the Upper Missouri Valley Health Unit in Williston, was attending the church service with her fiance, Will Gannon of Tioga.

The evening marked the first time Gannon, a cook at Our Home Cafe in Tioga, had gone to that particular church. “We were about 10 feet away when he came in,” he said. “My first thought was that it was some skit. Then he shouted he wasn’t joking.”

Steinberger and Gannon were among the parishioners caught in the church during the 7 pm Mass. The gunman, William Varner, 54, of Antioch, Illinois, pointed a shotgun at individuals during the robbery and left the church with an undisclosed amount of money. He was arrested a short time later by deputies with the Williams County Sheriff’s Office.

Gunman’s girlfriend
and mother found dead
Varner has been charged with first-degree murder in the October 28th deaths of his girlfriend, 61-year-old Peggy Henderson, and his mother, 82-year-old Dorothy Varner, in Antioch.

For Steinberger, the entire incident seems . . . . Read EVERY WORD on EVERY PAGE of The Kenmare News by subscribing--online or in print!