wfn.org | UMCOR consultant killed on Kenya/Somalia border

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 22, 1999 News media contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York
10-71B{150}

NEW YORK (UMNS) - A consultant for the United Methodist Board of Global
Ministries has been shot and killed on the Kenya-Somalia border.

Deena M. Umbarger, who was working for the United Methodist Committee on
Relief (UMCOR) in Kenya, died March 20, just a week short of her 36th
birthday. The Board of Global Ministries received word of the killing March
22.

Umbarger had flown to the border with a Somalian staff member of another
nongovernmental organization, according to board officials. They were to
meet with leaders of a town called Kiumgio on the Kenyan side and
Raskiompomi on the Somalian side. Before the meeting, someone started
shooting, and Umbarger was fatally wounded. No other deaths were reported.

The Rev. Randolph Nugent, the board's top staff executive, noted they did
not yet know the exact circumstances of her death 

"Deena's death is a tragedy," he said. "Not only was she brilliant, but she
possessed a deep passion for justice and a love for those who so desperately
need the kind of support provided 
through the outreach programs available from the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries through UMCOR."

She was the daughter of Mary Ann Workman of Sumner, Wash., and Dean Umbarger
of Cypress, Texas. Nugent reported that Bishop Elias Galvan of Seattle has
met with Workman.

Umbarger graduated from the University of Washington in 1990 with a degree
in psychology and was a 1994 graduate of Yale University Law School. She
served as an associate in the Washington D.C. law firms of Baker and
Hostetler and Powers, Pyles, Sutter and Verville before joining UMCOR's
Rosslyn, Va., office in January 1997. She had served both as an UMCOR
project manager in Nairobi, Kenya, and as finance director for the agency's
work in the Republic of Georgia before becoming a consultant for UMCOR's
nongovernmental organization in Kenya.
# # #

______________
United Methodist News Service
http://www.umc.org/umns/
newsdesk@umcom.umc.org
(615)742-5472