Four women and one man were killed during the attack in a residential neighbourhood of Wilkinsburg just before 11pm local time on Wednesday, the Allegheny County Police Department said.
Advertisement
Police drive past the scene of a deadly shooting on Thursday, March 10, 2016, in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.
Four of the victims were found dead on the back porch, while the other one died in hospital, Allegheny County police said. Two men were described as being in critical condition and a woman was described as stable.
Three others were wounded.
Carl Morris and his son, Robert, were getting ready to leave their house across the street when they heard a volley of three shots, a pause, then gunfire lasting more than a minute.
A prosecutor says a man with a pistol opened fire on the partygoers, driving them in the direction of an accomplice who gunned them down with a rifle. Tables and chairs, some tipped over, remained in the backyard, signs of a party quickly abandoned.
The shooting occurred at a backyard party/cookout. The house and yard has been cordoned off.
Wilkinsburg is a borough of Allegheny County, east of Pittsburgh.
“The ballistic evidence on the scene leads police to believe that two different weapons were discharged from two different people”, according to a police statement.
That brings the number of homicides in the late Wednesday night ambush to six.
An unidentified woman who said she lived one house away from the shooting scene told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that her neighbors had a cookout earlier in the day and were still in their backyard when the shots rang out. He says gunshots came from two distinct locations, but police don’t believe anyone at the party fired back. A fifth person, a woman, succumbed to her wounds at a nearby hospital.
Advertisement
A motive for the shooting wasn’t immediately clear.
