Eight people, including a 1-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, were killed in a residential shooting on Perry Street in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the suspected gunman was found dead as well, authorities said.
CBS News Pittsburgh reported that police were called around 5 p.m. Friday after witnesses said they saw a man firing a gun before he entered a home. Officers found two women dead in the street and more people dead inside the house. Erie Police Chief Richard Lorah said every death occurred before police arrived.
The toll and the family ties at the center of the case have left a tight-knit community facing a sudden, contained crime scene and an open investigation. City leaders moved quickly to tell residents the immediate threat was over. Investigators still have not publicly named the dead or stated a motive.
Erie police described a residential-area shooting that left eight people dead, plus the suspected shooter. Lorah told reporters the suspected gunman was related to seven of the eight people killed. He also said eight of those killed were related to each other, with everyone present described as family and one family friend.
Authorities said the people killed included a 1-year-old girl, a 5-year-old boy, four women, and two young men. One of the women was pregnant. No names have been released.
Police said the suspected shooter was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Lorah said responding officers did not fire their weapons. Loud bangs heard at the scene came from flash-bangs used by a tactical team, not fresh gunfire after police got there.
Lorah described the first moments after arrival in plain terms. He said officers faced no sound of a shot, no cry for help, and no movement inside.
Erie Police Chief Richard Lorah said:
"When we arrived on scene, we did not hear a gunshot,"
He continued:
"We did not hear a cry for help. We did not see movement inside. Had any of those been heard, we would've made entrance immediately. Those officers were met with an eerie silence."
That account matters for public understanding of the police response. Lorah said officers would have gone in at once if they had heard a gunshot, a call for help, or seen movement. Instead, he said, they met silence, and the deaths had already occurred.
Lorah put the relationships at the center of what police can say so far. He stated the suspected shooter was related to seven of the eight people killed and that eight of those killed were related to one another. He also said one family friend was among those present.
On motive, he drew a hard line. He said it was too soon to discuss and that he would not guess.
Lorah said:
"I think it's too soon to talk about motive, but obviously everyone is family who is there and one family friend."
He also declined to walk the public through the hardest scene details. He framed that choice as respect for the dead and their families, and as protection for the investigation.
Lorah said:
"Out of respect for the victims and their loved ones, I will not discuss the specific details of what our officers encountered today. Our investigators are working diligently as we speak to establish the full circumstances of what occurred. We will not speculate about a motive or any information that could compromise this investigation."
He summed up the scale of the deaths without dressing it up.
Lorah said:
"There are no words that can adequately express the magnitude of the loss of life here,"
Investigators will need to establish the full sequence inside and outside the home, the precise relationships among those killed, and any evidence that explains why the shooting happened. Authorities have not publicly confirmed a motive. They have not released the names of the people killed or of the suspected shooter.
The public timeline remains short and anchored to Friday evening and Saturday briefings.
Around 5 p.m. Friday, police were called to Perry Street after witnesses reported a man firing a gun and then going into a home. Officers later found two women dead in the street and additional people dead inside. Police said the suspected shooter was dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Lorah said all of the deaths happened before officers arrived, and that officers did not add any gunfire of their own.
By Saturday morning, the scene in Erie remained an active focus of official work and public attention. On Saturday afternoon, Lorah held a news conference and laid out the death count, the family connections police had identified, and the limits of what he would discuss. The same day, state and city leaders issued statements.
Weapon details beyond a gun have not been released in the material provided. A full street address beyond Perry Street has not been released. Calendar dates with a year and a timezone were not included in the available official public account summarized here.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a Saturday statement focused on the family and the city. He said his heart breaks for this family and that he and Lori are praying for their loved ones and the entire Erie community.
The city of Erie and Mayor Daria Devlin put out a joint statement aimed at public safety first. They said they wanted to assure the public that the situation has been contained. They also said their thoughts are with the people killed, their loved ones, and everyone affected by the night’s events.
That containment message is the clearest public-safety line officials have drawn so far. No additional suspect is named in the public account. No charges are listed because the suspected shooter was found dead. Arrest details beyond that posture are not part of the released information.
Lorah said investigators are working to establish the full circumstances. Several basic facts still sit behind that line.
Authorities have not publicly released the names of the eight people killed or the suspected shooter. They have not stated a motive. They have not detailed the specific conditions officers found inside the home beyond the chief’s decision to withhold those specifics. They have not publicly spelled out each family relationship tying the suspected shooter to seven of the eight people killed, or identified the family friend by role beyond that label.
Police have said one of the women was pregnant. Public information in this account does not go further on medical confirmation or the status of the unborn child. No separate public finding on that point has been released here.
For residents, the operational message from city hall is that the situation has been contained. For the families, the legal and factual record is still being built in real time by Erie investigators who say they will not guess and will not compromise the case with early talk.
Lorah also said eight of those killed were related to each other, a point he repeated as the clearest organizing fact police were willing to state while names remained private.
Lorah said:
"Eight of those victims were related to each other,"
That single official sentence captures why this shooting lands as more than a street crime blotter entry. It was a family-linked killing event on an ordinary residential block, discovered after witnesses reported gunfire, and closed at the scene only in the narrow sense that police say the suspected shooter was already dead and the city says the situation has been contained.
When children and a pregnant woman are among the dead, and when police say the killing was over before the first officer heard a sound, the public is right to demand a complete accounting. Names, motive, and the full interior facts still belong to the investigation. Equal justice and basic order both require that those answers come from evidence, not rumor, and that officials keep their word about what they will not spin before they can prove.
