October 11, 2026
US authorities confirmed the killing of nine people in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, in an incident that the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, described as a “tragic random shooting.”
The city authorities said in a statement issued on Saturday that the incident occurred late on Friday evening, and resulted in the death of all the victims before police forces arrived at the site.
The details of the incident began when police officers found two women dead in the street as a result of gunshot wounds. The house was immediately surrounded with the participation of tactical intervention teams after gunshots were heard from inside.
The authorities added that after storming the house, security forces found seven other victims, including children, in addition to the suspect, whom investigators believed committed suicide by shooting himself.
For his part, the city’s police chief, Rick Lorah, indicated that the circumstances of the incident were “extremely disturbing,” stressing at the same time the death of the suspect and the absence of any ongoing threat to public safety based on the available data.
The competent authorities are continuing their intensive investigations to uncover the circumstances of the crime and determine the motives behind its commission.
This incident, according to data from the Armed Violence Archive, is at least the nineteenth mass murder that the United States has witnessed since the beginning of the year, as the archive defines these crimes as incidents in which four or more people are killed.
