Photo: PJPJ23 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Nine people, two of them children, were killed in a shooting at a home in Erie, a city in the US state of Pennsylvania, on Friday evening, Governor Josh Shapiro said on Saturday. Police said the suspected gunman was among the nine dead, leaving eight victims.
How the shooting unfolded
Officers were called to reports of gunfire at around 5 pm local time on Friday and found two women dead in the street, local broadcaster Erie News Now reported. The suspect then barricaded himself inside a house as police surrounded it and ordered him to come out. More shots were heard during the standoff.
When officers finally entered the building, they found more victims inside and around the home, including the two children. The suspect was found dead with what police described as an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police have not said what led to the killings, and the identities of the victims and the gunman had not been officially released.
‘Deeply disturbing’
Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said he had not seen anything like it in more than 28 years of service, and doubted the city had ever experienced such loss of life. He declined to give further details, describing the circumstances only as deeply disturbing. Officers who responded to the scene were being offered counselling, according to local media.
I’m not sure that the city of Erie has ever seen the loss of life and the devastation that we just witnessed.
Rick Lorah, Erie Police Chief
Governor Shapiro said he had offered his administration’s full support to Erie Mayor Daria Devlin.
Context
Erie sits on the shore of Lake Erie in north-western Pennsylvania, about 188 km north of Pittsburgh. Some early reports put the toll at eight because they counted only the victims and not the gunman, which is why differing figures circulated on Friday night.
Mass shootings happen frequently in the United States, where guns far outnumber people. Efforts to tighten firearm restrictions have repeatedly run into steep political and legal hurdles, and each new attack tends to revive that debate without changing the law.
What happens next
Investigators are now working to establish the relationship between the gunman and the victims, how the shooting began in the street and moved into the house, and what drove it. Police have said little so far beyond confirming the toll, and further details, including the identities of those killed, are expected to come from the Erie Police Department and city officials in the coming days. For a city that, by its police chief’s account, may never have seen violence on this scale, the focus for now is on the families and on the officers who were first through the door.
