RICHLAND TOWNSHIP (KDKA) — Police have taken a man into custody in connection with the fatal stabbing of his 76-year-old grandmother while she sat at her kitchen table during breakfast, saying the “Archangel Michael” made him do it.

The incident happened at a home in Richland Township on Gibsonia Road.

It was just after 9 a.m. Tuesday when David and Connie Johnston were sitting at their kitchen table. Elsewhere in the home were their daughter, Ruth, and her son, 26-year-old Levi Daniel Staver.

“The actor’s grandmother and grandfather were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast,” said Chief Robert Amann, of the Northern Regional Police Department. “He came up from the downstairs area of the home and walked up behind the grandmother and stabbed her in the back while she was eating.”

Police say David Johnston grabbed his grandson and threw him out of the home where police took him into custody when they arrived a couple minutes later.

“One of the officers went onto the house and found the victim laying on the living room floor with a stab wound in the back,” Chief Amann said.

Connie Johnston, 76, was dead from that single stab wound to the back.

Northern Regional Police have been called to the home before.

Sources say Staver had an emotional disorder, and Constance Johnston had expressed fears that her grandson might harm her someday.

A police criminal complaint tonight describes in detail what alleged killer Staver told investigators.

Staver told detectives that he had been “stuck” living with his mother, and grandparents on Gibsonia Road.  According to the complaint, Staver said he was in his bedroom this morning, on his computer, and “an Arch Angel directed him what to do – kill the witch.”

The suspect was quoted as saying, “if the Arch Angel wants me to do something, I just do it.”

The complaint states, “Staver said he made the sign of the cross, got dressed like a soldier, took a sword, and  said this thing has got to go.”

• Watch Ralph Iannotti’s report:

Detectives said the murder weapon was not a sword, but, a black bowie knife.  County Police said when they asked Staver if he was employed, he said he was, ‘‘by the Angelic Army under the direction of the Archangel Michael.”

Earlier, sources said the only thing Staver said prior to the attack was “this has to end now.”

Staver’s mother and David Johnston were both brought to the Northern Regional Police Station where they spent the day talking to police while the house was processed by crime scene investigators.

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