‘It feels personal’: Pioneers Inn deals with bullet holes in front window

GILEAD, NE — The Pioneers Inn is an institution in southeast Nebraska. The restaurant and post office are the only two businesses remaining in Gilead, a town of about 30 people in eastern Thayer County.

This is where community members go to meet, to eat and to have fun. That’s why it felt personal when Karen Keilwitz showed up to work and found two bullet holes in her front window.

“It just kind of makes a person feel violated,” Keilwitz said.

Keilwitz has operated Pioneers Inn for 35 years. She was shocked to find glass strewn about the restaurant when she opened on Friday morning.

“The booth seats were full of it, the round table by the window was full of it and there was glass back in the kitchen," Keilwitz said. "We started looking around and a customer, he found the bullet holes in the front window.”

Thieves have broken in a few times over the years, but this time there’s no evidence the shooter went into the restaurant.

“You kept waiting to see what they took, you kept thinking they had to have gotten in somehow," Keilwitz said. "Then, you kind of felt like this is a little more personal.”

A neighbor says he saw a white truck driving off from the restaurant just after midnight Friday morning, but couldn’t make out a license plate.

Adding to the puzzle, some of the restaurant’s flyers in Fairbury have been ripped down or defaced. Everybody’s talking about it, but nobody has an answer.

“Even the other customers think it’s personal, that’s just rude," Keilwitz said. "And they can’t figure it out.”

While they search for an answer, the Gilead community is pulling closer together.

“Everybody watches out for everybody, so now we have our backs even more,” Keilwitz said.

And Keilwitz and the Pioneers Inn keeps on trekking.

“We’re still going strong and we’re going to keep going strong until we can’t go no more,” Keilwitz said.

Keilwitz and staff haven’t been able to find the bullets that made the holes. If they do, they’ll turn them in to the Thayer County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating the case. The public is asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office if they have any information.

The people running a popular restaurant in a tiny Nebraska town are coming to grips with a surprising act of violence.