Around 5 pm on Friday night, October 9, police responded to reports of a shooting at a home in the city of Erie. They discovered two women fatally shot in the road outside the house, along with six additional victims and the deceased suspect.
The killer who carried out a mass murder-suicide in Pennsylvania was identified as a grandfather, who killed nine people, including his young grandchildren and pregnant daughter, relatives said, according to the New York Post.
The suspect initially launched a shooting spree inside the house. Among those who died was Angelina Stone, the gunman’s pregnant daughter who was days away from giving birth to her third child, Kryie. The unborn baby has been added to the death toll, making the number of victims nine. The shooter killed eight family members in all, as well as a female friend of Angelina’s.
He then stepped outside to shoot two more women dead, aged 51 and 37, who rushed to the scene, before going back inside and killing himself, police said. Angelina’s two other children – son Isiah, 5, and daughter Amari’anna, almost 2 – were also murdered.
The father of one of Angelina’s slain children told Erie News Now that the gunman was his onetime partner’s dad. “She was pregnant, about to have a baby in a couple of days and she had a daughter that was almost two, and her son Isaiah, who I believe was four or five,” Ezekiel’s sister Lisa Simmers told the outlet. “They are all just beautiful children and definitely did not deserve what happened to them.”
He was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot in the family home. The suspect, 45, has yet to be fully identified.
Erie cops have not yet suggested a motive.
They said on Sunday, October 11, that identifications were being held because “surviving family members are still being notified.”
