Two commended for actions during 2013 shooting at Saint James the Just Catholic Church in Ogden

Friday, Dec. 19, 2014

OGDEN — God was present at Saint James the Just Catholic Church on Father’s Day 2013, say those who were at the 11:30 a.m. Mass when parishioner James Evans was shot by his son-in-law just before Communion.

“God – he just watched over us, every single person, including the shooter,” said Alain Reyes, one of the parishioners who chased Charles Richard Jennings, Jr. from the church after the shooting.

Jennings was captured by law enforcement later that day; in February he pled guilty and mentally ill to charges of attempted murder and aggravated burglary. He was sentenced to four years to life.

Evans was shot in the head but has made a remarkable recovery, said Father Erik Richtsteig, pastor of St. James the Just, who was praying the offertory when the shot went off.

“It was just a miracle because [Evans] turned his head at the last moment” so that the bullet caused comparatively little damage, Fr. Richtsteig said.

Mass that sunny June morning started without a hint of what was to come. Reyes was sitting in the congregation with his wife, three daughters and four visiting nieces. When the shot was fired, he wondered if it was a firecracker, but then he saw Jennings with the handgun, he said. 

“My first reaction was to tell the girls ‘get down, get down,’” Reyes said. Then he went after Jennings. “My whole focus was to try to tackle him.”

Also in the congregation that morning were Greg Bartel and his family. At the sound of the shot, he grabbed his oldest son by the neck and pushed him under the pew. At the same time, he heard a voice. “It was one word, and it was ‘now,’” he said. 

Bartel charged at Jennings, running across the tops of the pews to get to him. 

Pursued by Reyes and Bartel, Jennings ran from the church and across the parking lot. At North Street, “I heard another word, and it was ‘stop,’” Bartel said, so he did. “I obviously wasn’t prepared for the incident, so he had the upper hand.”

Reyes continued after Jennings, following him to a nearby house. At the time Reyes regretted that he wasn’t carrying the .45 handgun for which he had recently received a concealed weapon permit, but later he was thankful that he was unarmed, because he would have shot Jennings, “and that would have been in front of my daughters,” which he would have regretted, he said.

For their actions, Reyes and Bartel are being commended by the United States armed forces. Reyes, a Marine Corps master gunnery sergeant who was stationed in Utah as a recruiter and now is at the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in San Diego, received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal on Dec. 5. The medal is the Navy’s second highest non-combat decoration awarded for heroism.

Bartel, a master sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, will be presented with the Airman’s Medal on Jan. 11. The award is given to those who have distinguished themselves by a heroic act, usually at the voluntary risk of his or her life, but not involving actual combat.

Both men shy from being called a hero, even though they chased an armed man when they themselves had no weapon or protective clothing.

“It had to come to a stop; there were a lot more lives at stake than just mine,” said Bartel, whose career field is aircraft maintenance. “It has nothing to do with training … you just have to be willing.”

Reyes, who received the Marine Corps’ basic rifleman training but worked in transportation before becoming a recruiter, agreed that he acted on instinct rather than from training.

Fr. Richtsteig, who served as a military chaplain for eight years, disagrees. “The military training that Greg and Alain had, because they had that situational awareness, they were able to do what they did. They didn’t just sit there wondering what to do, they took immediate action.”

Fr. Richtsteig thanks God for protecting Reyes and Bartel that day. “God helped a lot of people,” the priest said. “Not just those two guys; a lot of people did the right thing on that day, or the outcome would have been much different.” 

For example, a 15-year-old who was sitting with her younger brother grabbed him “and shoved him under the pew and got on top of him,” when the shooting occurred, Fr. Richtsteig said. “There were people who immediately started praying the rosary. Not everyone could take out after him, but by not panicking, by taking care of the people with them, they did the right thing.”

Among those who stayed in the church was Lisa Bartel. While her husband leapt after Jennings, she had two thoughts instantaneously, she said. “One was goodbye, because I knew he was going and I really didn’t think I’d see him again.” 

Her second thought was how she could get all four of their children under the pews for protection. The two older children helped with the younger ones, and their mother held the youngest because she was afraid he would get up. Then, as panic began to set in because she felt unprotected, Lisa Bartel heard a voice saying, “pray,” so she began to recite the Hail Mary loud enough that her children could hear, so they would know she was unhurt.

As soon as the congregation was able to re-gather, Fr. Richtsteig continued the Mass because “once the Mass is started, if at all possible you finish it,” he said. “I think it was also the right thing to do for other reasons because you didn’t want Ricky to win, Ricky or the one who inspired him to do this.”

Although some of the parishioners were too upset to remain, the Bartels were among those who did. Their oldest son took the place of one of the altar servers who was too shaken to continue.

Greg Bartel is thankful that Fr. Richtsteig “wasn’t going to take Mass away from us. … Mass isn’t the Mass without Communion,” he said.

In the following weeks, “the great thing that my wife and I saw was that everybody continued to go to church,” Reyes said. “It was shaky at first, I think, the first few weeks … but afterward you saw that it got stronger and stronger.”

The Saint James the Just congregation will never be the same after the shooting, Fr. Richtsteig said, “but I don’t see any lasting damage. There’s going to be scars, but no damage. … When I think about it, I really don’t think about what [Jennings] did, I think about what people like Greg and Alain and the other people did.”

Both Reyes and Bartel had families at the church that day, and “they could have just stayed there and taken care of their own family, but they didn’t think just about them, they thought about the larger community, which I think is characteristic of our military,” Fr. Richtsteig said.