Andrew Kane, a 25-year-old Verona man, lay dying from a gunshot wound on a residential street in Monroeville's Garden City section. A silver PT Cruiser sped away from the neighborhood, with its occupants firing at police cars and hitting the hood of one vehicle.

The shooting early yesterday morning was the latest in a series of deadly gun crimes that have struck the Pittsburgh region during the last week, including three double homicides -- in Beaver Falls, Stowe and the city's Lincoln-Lemington section.

There aren't any apparent connections among the killings, according to investigators from the municipalities and from Allegheny County police, which is investigating the Stowe and Monroeville deaths.

Nor is there a major upsurge in violence. Allegheny County's homicide rate -- 21 this year, not including the city of Pittsburgh -- is on pace with past years, county police Assistant Superintendent Jim Morton said.

But the recent bloodshed will be a central topic when the "Coalition Against Violence" meets tonight at Duquesne University and releases several reports that outline how people from all corners of society can play a role in making their communities safer.

The 5 p.m. meeting is in the Power Center ballroom and is open to the public.

"Violence has to be something that we collectively rebel against," said Tim Stevens, chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project and a leader of the coalition.

Tonight's event stems from Mr. Stevens' time as the head of the local branch of the NAACP in the mid 1990s, when he and other community leaders created "Strategy '95: A Plan to End Violence in Pittsburgh" at the height of drug and gang violence of that era.

Overall, homicide rates have fallen since then, but, last year, a report from the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center showed that Pennsylvania led the nation in black homicide victims, based on the most recent FBI data.

That news outraged Mr. Stevens and other local black leaders, prompting them to launch the Coalition Against Violence. Today, after more than 50 meetings, the coalition will unveil a vastly expanded version of the 1995 document.

Two dozen groups -- from the black business community to local schools to the media -- are singled out for steps they can take.

Some are very specific, such as a suggestion that professional athletes dress appropriately and avoid using profanity. Others are unrealistic in the short term, including a call for the state Legislature to toughen gun laws in the state. (Lawmakers from rural areas have long resisted restrictions on gun ownership.)

But Mr. Stevens vows that the coalition's work won't just "sit on a table."

"There are a lot of things that aren't going to happen soon," he said. "But we have to start to speak about the possibilities."

Efforts to strengthen the family are critical, he said, as is the "creation of a new values system."

The event's speakers include Mr. Stevens; Valerie S. Dixon, executive director of the Prevent Another Crime Today initiative; and Charles Dougherty, president of Duquesne University.

The Pittsburgh metropolitan region averaged 4.3 murders per 100,000 residents from 1999 through 2006, well below the national average of 7.2 murders, according to statistics compiled by Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University.

(The Baltimore region had the highest rate, with 12.5 murders per 100,000 residents.)

But, in 2004, Pennsylvania's black homicide rate was 29.52 victims per 100,000 residents, slightly ahead of Louisiana -- pre-Hurricane Katrina -- with 29.48.

The past week's homicides struck both white and black victims.

Mr. Kane, the shooting victim in Monroeville, was black. Police found him in the 400 block of Fieldstone Drive around 4 a.m. yesterday. He died an hour later at Forbes Regional Hospital from a gunshot wound to the trunk, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office.

Police chased a PT Cruiser toward Penn Hills, Monroeville Assistant Police Chief K. Douglas Cole said. The occupants of the PT Cruiser fired several shots at police during the chase, he said, and at least one shot hit the hood of a police car.

The police chased the car into Penn Hills but lost sight of it. Witnesses told police the car drove down Laketon Road into Wilkinsburg.

Allegheny County homicide detectives were searching for the car last night. The vehicle has Pennsylvania plate GVN-8214.

Barbara Cutler, 58, who lives across the street from where the shooting occurred, said her husband woke up when he heard several gunshots. He then went outside and saw Mr. Kane laying in the street.

"We never have any kind of problems here," Mrs. Cutler said. "Then something like that happens. It scares you."

Pittsburgh homicide investigators had no new information about the deaths of Christopher Brandyburg, 32, and William Walker, 34, both of Beaver Falls, who were found dead in a van at the corner of Apple Avenue and Grotto Street in the city on Saturday evening.

Allan Moorefield, 42, has been charged with two counts of homicide in the case, but police are still looking for the van's driver.

Mr. Morton, of county police, said investigators are waiting for results from crime lab tests in the killings of Sonsiarae Watts, 45, and Dahl Palm, 44, who died of multiple gunshot wounds Friday in the apartment where they lived on Valley Street in Stowe.

Police have extensively questioned Wendell Jones, Ms. Watts' ex-boyfriend.

Beaver Falls police had no new information in the shooting deaths last Monday night of Richard Warren Harper and his wife, Demetria, both 32, at their home on Second Avenue.