Gunmen worked as team to kill 6 at cookout near Pittsburgh, police say

Two gunmen working as a team fatally shot five people including a pregnant woman and critically wounded two others at a backyard cookout, with one attacker using a high-velocity rifle to shoot all the victims in the head as they were driven in his direction, a prosecutor said Thursday.

“The murders were planned. They were calculated, brutal,” Dist. Atty. Stephen Zappala said of the Wednesday night shootings.

The medical examiner officially ruled the death of the fetus a homicide Thursday afternoon, bringing the fatalities in the late Wednesday night ambush attack to six.

The gunmen appeared to have targeted one or two of the victims, said Zappala, who added that they hadn’t ruled out drugs as a motive.

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Four women, one of them pregnant, and a man were killed as they rushed toward the back porch and an alleyway to seek cover as a gunman fired a .40-caliber pistol at as many as 15 adults who were playing cards and having a late-night cookout in the yard.

That steered the victims toward the rear porch and door of the house, where an accomplice armed with a 7.62-mm rifle similar to an AK-47 shot them from behind a chain-link fence less than 10 feet from the porch, Zappala said.

Neither weapon has been found.

The man with the rifle aimed high throughout the barrage of bullets. Four of the dead were found on the tiny back porch.

“They were all head shots,” Zappala said.

The dead included three siblings: Brittany Powell, 27, who lived at the home; Jerry Shelton, 35; and Chanetta Powell, 25. The other two were Shada Mahone, 26, and Tina Shelton, 37.

“My whole family was massacred,” said Jessica Shelton, the mother of the siblings and aunt of the other two killed.

“It doesn’t make sense to take people’s lives like that,” said Jessica Shelton, who had been at the party earlier in the evening.

Her daughter Chanetta was eight months pregnant, she said. And one of the critically wounded victims is also her son, she said.

One of her grandchildren was at the party and saw his mother lying dead, then ran upstairs, Shelton said.

“He said he didn’t want the bad men to get him,” she said.

She said she didn’t know why anyone at the party would have been targeted.

All of the victims were hit by shots from the rifle, and none from gunfire from the pistol, which “looked like a distraction almost,” said agent Chris Taylor, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said 49 shots were fired in total, 31 from the rifle.

All of the victims had multiple wounds.

“It looks like right now they were all fleeing toward the back door of the residence when the second gunman fired from the side of the yard,” said Lt. Andrew Schurman of the Allegheny County police homicide unit. “They all seemed to get caught on the back porch.”

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.

Robert Morris said he saw children run onto the small back porch and heard someone scream, “Mommy, Mommy!”

“It was terrible,” he said.

The Morrises said Brittany Powell lived at the home with a daughter who was about 6 or 7. They said the house was considered a “safe haven” in the neighborhood.

The backyard is about 30 feet by 50 feet. Police said they found one pile of shell casings just outside the yard in an alley, where they believe the .40-caliber pistol was fired, Zappala said. They found more shells along the fence separating the house from a neighbor’s yard, which is where Zappala said the rifle was fired.

Bullet holes were visible Thursday around the porch addition. Tables and chairs, some tipped over, remained in the backyard, signs of a party quickly abandoned.

The suspects fled on foot.

Wilkinsburg is a poorer, largely blighted suburb just east of Pittsburgh that is known for drug trafficking and gun violence. But neighbors described the street on which the shooting occurred as generally quiet.

After the shooting, groups of residents gathered on the street, some of them sobbing and saying they lost family members.

Mike Jones, 57, lives in a duplex on a small hill overlooking the alley and backyard where the shooting occurred.

Although Wilkinsburg has a reputation for violence, Jones said it has been rare in his neighborhood, which is about a block off a major street about a half-mile from Interstate 376, the major commuter artery through Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs.

“This is unheard of,” Jones said, shaking his head as homicide detectives milled about in the yard and alley. “It doesn’t happen around here.”

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald urged witnesses to step forward, saying that “can be our first step to stopping the violence in our communities.”

“As a community, we must say enough is enough,” he said.

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