A quiet Pennsylvania neighborhood became the scene of an almost unimaginable family tragedy Friday evening.
By the time police entered a home in Erie, eight victims were dead. The dead included a 5-year-old boy, a 1-year-old girl and a woman who was eight months pregnant.
The suspected gunman was also dead from what authorities described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah laid out the first detailed timeline Saturday. What investigators found points to a sudden eruption of violence that was largely over before officers could reach the people inside.
Local news outlets began sharing the grim details as authorities identified the ages and relationships of the victims:
According to the Associated Press, investigators recovered video and audio that captured muffled gunshots inside the house shortly before 5 p.m., giving detectives a partial record of the attack before the first emergency alert.
Two distressed women then arrived and pounded on the door. Police say the 45-year-old gunman came outside and shot both women as they moved toward him, then went back inside.
Officers arrived within minutes after the city’s gunshot-detection system sent an alert. The two women were already dead outside the residence.
Police used a drone and a robot before entering the home. Inside, officers found the two children on the first floor, along with two more women and two young men in a stairwell.
The gunman was found dead on the second floor.
Seven of the eight victims were related to the shooter, Lorah said. The eighth was a friend of the pregnant woman.
The adult victims included women ages 24, 37, 51 and 53, along with two men ages 18 and 22. Police said the 24-year-old woman was eight months pregnant.
The scale of the loss is difficult to absorb: multiple generations of one family were wiped out in a matter of minutes.
National outlets quickly picked up the story as the full death toll became clear:
At Saturday’s news conference, Lorah declined to describe everything officers encountered inside. He said he wanted the public to understand both the gravity of the scene and the profound impact it had on the first responders and the Erie community.
The chief also refused to offer a motive before investigators have the evidence to support one.
Police are examining the victims’ phones and speaking with surviving relatives. A central unanswered question is why the two women who were killed outside appeared to know that something was wrong inside the home.
“We have to figure out what that is,” Lorah said, according to the Associated Press.
That restraint matters. In the first hours after a mass killing, rumor tends to move faster than verified fact, and Erie officials have already warned about inaccurate information circulating online.
The known facts are terrible enough without invention.
WGAL reported that the pregnant victim’s unborn child could not be saved because too much time had passed before she was found.
The station also reported that neighboring surveillance video showed the two women trying to get attention from people nearby before the gunman called to them and opened fire.
Lorah said the first alert reached police at about 4:55 p.m. Friday afternoon. Investigators believe the people inside the house had already been killed by then, while the sounds some neighbors later thought were additional gunfire came from flashbang devices deployed by the SWAT team.
Coverage from across the region underscored just how unusual the scene was, even for experienced law-enforcement officers:
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the attack as one of the worst mass shootings in Pennsylvania history, a distinction that captures the scale of the loss without answering why it happened.
Police have not released the names of the victims or the shooter. Authorities said there was no continuing threat to the public.
Gov. Josh Shapiro offered the full support of his administration to Erie Mayor Daria Devlin and local officials. Devlin spoke directly to the victims’ families during Saturday’s news conference.
The Post-Gazette reported that police received no indication of a broader public threat once the scene was secured. Investigators are now reconstructing the relationships, communications and events that brought the victims to the Perry Street home.
No statement from a governor, mayor or police chief can make sense of a 5-year-old boy, a 1-year-old girl and an unborn child being lost this way.
For now, the responsible course is to let investigators establish the truth, refuse to turn unanswered questions into political ammunition and remember that this story is first about eight people whose lives were taken inside a family home.
Erie will be living with those empty chairs long after the breaking-news alerts disappear.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post Police Reveal Chilling Timeline After Eight Are Killed Inside One Pennsylvania Home appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
