Police in Pennsylvania say they are searching for a pair of attackers who opened fire at a back-yard party in a Pittsburgh suburb Wednesday ...
Police in Pennsylvania say they are searching for a pair of attackers who opened fire at a back-yard party in a Pittsburgh suburb Wednesday night, killing at least five people and injuring three others.
No motive has been offered by authorities investigating the mass shooting, and no suspects have been publicly identified.
The Allegheny County Police Department said that a 911 call came in shortly before 11 p.m. Wednesday about a shooting at a home in Wilkinsburg, a small borough just east of Pittsburgh.
Police said they found four people dead on the home’s back porch — three women and a man — and another four who were injured. All eight had been shot during what appeared to be a cookout in the back yard, authorities said.
A woman who was injured in the shooting died at a hospital. Two men who were injured remained in critical condition Thursday, and a woman was treated and released.
Allegheny County officials on Thursday morning identified the five people killed as Tina Shelton, 37; Shada Mahone, 26; and three siblings: Jerry Shelton, 35; Brittany Powell, 27; and Chanetta Powell, 25.
Authorities did not immediately identify a cause of death, though police had said all of them were struck by gunfire.
Authorities said the initial evidence suggested that two people fired different weapons. They described a chaotic scene in which people at the cookout were trying to escape one attacker firing from an alley, only to run into a hail of bullets from another shooter.
“It looks like right now they were all fleeing toward the back door of the residence when the second gunman fired from the side of the yard,” Lt. Andrew Schurman of the Allegheny County police told reporters at a briefing. “And they all seemed to get caught on the back porch.”
Local resident Kayla Alexandertold WPXI that she was walking home from work when she heard about 20 gunshots, then a pause, before six more shots echoed over the neighborhood.
“This street is always quiet. There is nothing but kids on this street,” she said. “I’m shaken, so it’s pretty bad.”
Photos from the scene showed a residential street littered with police evidence markers.
This rampage is the latest in a series of shooting sprees that have shaken communities nationwide, coming just weeks after attacks in Hesston, Kan., and Kalamazoo, Mich. Since last year, mass shootings have erupted at locations as disparate as a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif.; a community college in Roseburg, Ore.; and a church in Charleston, S.C.
Wilkinsburg has about 15,000 residents, and is poorer than surrounding Allegheny County as well as the state, with one in five Wilkinsburg residents living at the poverty line, according to census figures.
“Wilkinsburg is a community filled with grief, shock and anger this morning,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said in a statement Thursday. “We share their grief and offer them our support in the days and weeks to come.”
(This post has been updated.)
via washington post
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