Two men suspected of ambushing partygoers at a backyard barbecue near Pittsburgh and killing five of them, including a pregnant woman, were being sought by Pennsylvania police on Thursday.
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Two wounded men were in critical condition and a woman was in stable condition Thursday morning at a hospital.
Three of the women and the man were pronounced dead at the scene when police arrived after receiving a telephone call around 11 p.m. reporting the shootings, and the fifth fatal victim died of her wounds at a local hospital.
The massacre in Wilkinsburg, a borough of about 15,000 mostly lower and middle-income residents, is the latest in a series of mass shootings that have made gun control a matter of heated debate in the US.
However, evidence at the crime scene pointed to two shooters who used an AK47 automatic rifle and a. 9 millimeter handgun, he said.
Bullet holes from what police say was an AK47 are clearly visible on the back porch.
Police “don’t have any firm suspects”, Moffatt said. He said gunshots came from two distinct locations but police don’t believe anyone at the party fired back.
Fitzgerald says “we must say enough is enough”.
“This is unheard of”, Jones said of the ambush, shaking his head as homicide detectives milled about in the yard and alley.
The other two adults killed were cousins to the others, Shelton said.
The medical examiner’s office “officially determined that the eight-month-old fetus was also a homicide”, he said. “The murders were planned, calculated, brutal”, said Zappala.
The dead included three siblings, Brittany Powell, 27, who lived at the home; Jerry Shelton, 35; and Chanetta Powell, 25, who was eight months’ pregnant. “You got to stop it now”, she said.
“It wasn’t like he was just squeezing shots off randomly”, he said.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shooting.
The five were killed late Wednesday during the backyard party in Wilkinsburg.
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Robert Morris said he saw children run onto the small back porch and heard someone scream, “Mommy, Mommy!” Macklin who lives on the street behind the shooting scene said that as far as she knew police had not been to the house before.
