A 45-year-old grandfather who killed eight people in an Erie, Pennsylvania mass shooting was the family’s patriarch, relatives have said, as mourners gathered outside the home where the attack took place.
The victims included two young children, a pregnant woman and seven members of the same family. The eighth victim was a friend of one of them, according to Erie police.
Julius Windham, whose one-year-old daughter Amarianna was killed, said the suspected gunman had never appeared troubled or unusually distressed.
“I think that was a front for him,” Mr Windham told the Associated Press. “Him every day, him smiling and being just — you would think of nothing like that would happen.”
The shooting happened on Friday, October 9, at a house in the 700 block of Perry Street. Police were alerted at about 4.50pm by an automated gunshot-detection system, followed by several emergency calls.
Officers found two women, aged 37 and 51, dead outside the property. Investigators later obtained footage from a neighbour’s Ring doorbell camera which appeared to show the women arriving in distress, knocking on doors and seeking help before the gunman came outside and shot them.
The recording also appeared to capture muffled gunfire from inside the house before the women were killed, Erie police chief Rick Lorah said.
Police forced their way into the two-storey property after receiving no response and hearing no sounds from inside. Seven bodies were found within the house, including Windham’s daughter and a five-year-old boy on the ground floor.
Four other victims — two men aged 19 and 21, and two women aged 24 and 44 — were found on a stairwell on the upper floor. The 24-year-old woman was pregnant.
The suspected gunman was found upstairs with what police described as an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. A firearm was recovered from him.
The Erie County coroner ruled the deaths of the eight victims, including the unborn child, as homicides. The suspected gunman’s death was ruled a suicide. Officials have not released any of their names.
Chief Lorah said investigators believed everyone had died before officers arrived. He said the two women found outside appeared to have known that something was happening inside the house.
“They knew something was going on at that house,” he said, adding that detectives were examining mobile phones and speaking to relatives and witnesses to establish what the women knew.
Mr Lorah said mental health could have played a role, but stressed that it was too early to establish a motive.
He described the scene as one that would “stay with you long after you leave”, but declined to discuss details of what officers found inside out of respect for the victims and their families.
On Sunday, candles, flowers and soft toys were placed outside the Perry Street house in memory of those killed.
