Gunmen ambush backyard party outside Pittsburgh, killing 6

WILKINSBURG, Pa. – 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 rifle to shoot the victims in the head as they were driven in his direction, a prosecutor said Thursday.

“The murders were planned. They were calculated, brutal,” District Attorney 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 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.

Police said they have no suspects. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald urged witnesses to step forward, saying that “can be our first step to stopping the violence in our communities.”

Four women, one of them eight months pregnant, and a man were killed as they rushed toward the back porch 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.

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 she said one of the critically wounded victims is also her son.

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.

“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 homicide unit. “They all seemed to get caught on the back porch.”

The gunmen 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.