 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
2 dead, 3 wounded in bloody rampage Wilkinsburg man lays siege to his neighborhood Thursday, March 02, 2000 By Michael A. Fuoco, Cindi Lash and Mike Bucsko, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
A Wilkinsburg man enraged by what he considered the slow replacement of his apartment door laid siege to his neighborhood yesterday in a bloody rampage that ended only after he killed two people, wounded three others and traumatized an entire community.
Three hours after the first shot was fired, suspect Ronald Taylor, 39, slid his .22-caliber revolver and a knife down the hallway of an office building to Pittsburgh police negotiator Sgt. John Fisher and surrendered.
The siege had ended. The questioning had only begun.
At a press conference a couple of hours later, visibly stunned Wilkinsburg officials tried to make sense of senselessness. They conceded they could not.
"The community of Wilkinsburg is saddened and shocked by the random violence that took place here today. Too often you think it is impossible for something like this to happen in your community," Mayor Wilbert Young said.
He and police Chief Gerald Brewer expressed their condolences to families of the victims and their gratitude to the 30 police and medic agencies that responded.
Killed were John Kroll, 55, of Cabot, Butler County, a maintenance man, and Joseph Healy, 71, a former priest and longtime resident of Wilkinsburg. The other victims ranged in condition from critical to good.
No one could answer the question on the mind of everyone from President Clinton to other citizens of a nation frightened and numbed by such mass shootings: Why?
Why, as police believe, did Taylor, who never had any run-ins with the law, set fire to his fifth-floor apartment at 1208 Wood St., and shoot Kroll?
Why did he then walk several blocks to the Burger King restaurant on Penn Avenue, shoot Healy, cross Penn and shoot three more men inside and outside the McDonald's restaurant?
"We have no specific motive at this time," was all that Brewer could say.
But authorities are looking into the possibility that the shootings were racially motivated, an issue raised by Taylor himself in the negotiations with Fisher and in comments to witnesses. Taylor is black and the five shooting victims were white.
Pittsburgh FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said his agency has begun a civil rights investigation to determine whether racial animus played any part in the case.
Whatever the cause, there was no escaping the effect.
"This is a very profound tragedy for our jurisdiction," Brewer said.
Insults and anger
About 9 a.m., John DeWitt and John Kroll went to No. 510 at 1208 Wood St. to remove and repair Ronald Taylor's apartment door. It was the second time in recent weeks that DeWitt had been summoned to Taylor's apartment for the same task.
Taylor, never kind to DeWitt, was more vitriolic than usual in his racial taunts, DeWitt said.
"[Taylor] was calling me a white racist, a pig ... everything in the book," DeWitt said afterward. "He just kept it up."
Taylor had lived in the apartment since summer. He complained whenever white people moved in to the Woodside Garden Apartments.
For a reason unknown to DeWitt, Taylor reserved a special racial ire for him.
"He didn't like me," said DeWitt, 63, of Hampton. "I don't know why."
DeWitt and Kroll were subjected to insults as they removed Taylor's door from its hinges yesterday morning to repair the damage done when Taylor forced his way into the apartment after he had locked himself out, DeWitt said.
Apparently, the repair took longer than Taylor expected. He lit into DeWitt and Kroll again when they returned with the new door about 10:30 a.m.
The taunting continued while the two maintenance men for Delta Property Management rehung the door. At one point, DeWitt said, he told Taylor, "Why don't you just shut up?"
"[Taylor] looked at me and said, 'You're dead. You have to come in the building again sometime and I'll get you,' " DeWitt said.
DeWitt said he picked up a hammer and made sure Taylor saw it.
When the job was nearly done, a resident down the hall from the fifth floor apartment called to DeWitt and asked if he could help her open a locked bedroom door. DeWitt let Kroll finish Taylor's door and walked down the hall.
It would prove to be a lifesaving call for DeWitt.
Sometime in the next several minutes, Kroll finished the job and went downstairs to the first floor. He was joined there by another apartment maintenance worker, Andrew Williams, who is black.
Meanwhile, Taylor lit the couch on fire in his two-room efficiency apartment. Then he went downstairs armed with a .22-caliber revolver.
Kroll and Williams were at the rear of the first floor of the apartment building in a boiler room. Williams saw the gun and asked Taylor why he was armed. Taylor told Williams he planned to use the gun because he "didn't like white people," Williams' wife, Charlene, said.
Taylor shot Kroll in the neck and Kroll fell into Williams' arms. Then Taylor told Williams he wanted to find DeWitt.
DeWitt had just finished putting his tools in his truck in the building's rear parking lot and was walking toward Wood Street when he saw Taylor walking in front of the building. Because of the earlier threat, DeWitt said he quickly ducked behind the cover of the building as Taylor walked by.
A minute later, DeWitt saw Williams, covered with blood, carrying a bleeding Kroll from the building's entrance. Williams told him Kroll had been shot by Taylor and that he was taking him to the LifeCare Hospitals of Pittsburgh, the old Forbes Metropolitan Health Center, a few blocks away on Penn Avenue.
Williams, 32, of Homewood, put Kroll into his truck and drove the five blocks to the hospital. Kroll's wound proved fatal.
As Williams hurried to his car, he warned DeWitt, "Get back in the building because he's got a gun and he's looking for you," DeWitt said.
Williams' boss, apartment manager Rebecca Van Kirk, persuaded him to go to West Penn Hospital. He remains hospitalized for trauma, Charlene Williams said.
Police received a call at 11:15 a.m. that a gunshot victim had arrived at Life Care. The gunman, police were told, was at 1208 Wood St.
Police responded to that address and found the fifth floor, where Taylor lived, totally engulfed in flames. They called firefighters who had to wait before entering the building because there was uncertainty if an armed man was still inside.
But about 11:20 a.m., police received another call of a gunshot victim inside the Burger King on Penn Avenue, only blocks away.
There, Healy had been fatally shot.
More shots fired
At about that time, Gene Frederick, 19, of Wilkinsburg, was having breakfast with friends at the Dunkin' Donuts at 408 Penn Ave. when he heard a gunshot outside. Seconds later, a woman ran into the doughnut shop screaming, "Help me! Someone shot my Dad!"
That woman, Candy Zambo, had been with her stepfather, Richard Clinger, 56, of North Huntingdon, when he pulled his van into the parking lot of the McDonald's next door. Clinger parked in a space near the restaurant's Penn Avenue door while Zambo ran inside to use the bathroom, police said.
After she returned, police said, Taylor strode into the parking lot and shot Clinger through his window.
"We were sitting in the truck, and this guy just walked up," Zambo said. "I thought he was going to ask for directions. He just started shooting and then walked into McDonald's."
Frederick said he ran out of Dunkin' Donuts and used a pay telephone outdoors to call 911. While he was dialing, he said, he heard another shot but couldn't see who was firing it. He then ran to the van.
"[Clinger] got a bandanna out of his pocket and was trying to wipe away the blood and [shattered window] glass from his hands. I told him, 'Lie back, take it easy,' " Frederick said. "I was trying to help him lean back so he could breathe easier.
"And then a guy runs out of McDonald's and yells, 'My manager's shot in the head.' "
Inside McDonald's, cook Michael West was picking himself off the floor and bellowing for his younger brother, who also was in the restaurant when the gunfire erupted.
West, 21, of Wilkinsburg, had worked the breakfast shift and was just punching out when Taylor walked in through the door that West intended to walk out. Taylor walked up to the counter, West said, and opened fire on the manager.
"I heard shots, and then I saw the guy run out," West said. "I knelt down on the floor and said to myself, 'What in the hell is this?' I was so scared because my little brother [Jamar West, 17] had been eating breakfast with his friends, and I didn't know where he was."
Taylor walked out of a door on the opposite side of the restaurant, then fired at Emil Sanielevici, who was waiting to pick up food in the drive-through lane, officials said.
"Then I saw him running down the alley [behind the restaurant] but I was too afraid to go outside," West said. "I went and found my brother lying on the ground OK, and then I ran to check on [ manager Steven Bostard, 25, of Swissvale]."
Brewer went to the McDonald's crime scene. By then, police knew one man had caused all that morning's major emergency calls.
"I realized at that point that he was somebody who needed to be stopped so we didn't have any more carnage," Brewer recalled.
Police, medics respond
An affidavit filed in support of Taylor's arrest said a man saw Taylor at his Ross Street residence and that Taylor tried to hide a gun in his hat and said, "This gun is for the crackers."
Police said that while Taylor was on Ross, he went into a home, emptied the spent shells from his gun and reloaded. He went back outside and was walking east on West Street when he came upon several Wilkinsburg police officers.
Taylor pulled out his weapon and fired two rounds at the officers. The officers did not return fire--the first of several instances yesterday in their dealings with Taylor in which police showed tremendous restraint, Brewer said.
Taylor ran into the Penn West Building, which includes a children's day-care center, adult day care, and numerous businesses.
Several officers isolated Taylor on the first floor while other officers -- Brewer said at risk to their lives -- began evacuating the building of the first of the 125 people inside. They began with the fifth and fourth floors but initially could not get onto the third floor because of security for the day-care center there with 37 children.
SWAT teams from Pittsburgh and Allegheny County were requested and responded, along with state police, surrounding suburban police officers, county sheriff's deputies, the FBI, city school police, city detectives and medics from Pittsburgh and nearby communities. Brewer said he couldn't estimate how many emergency personnel responded but it surely had to be 300 or more.
"It was chaotic at a scene like that with hostages and a viable threat," Brewer said. "But we worked very well together.
"We knew what he had already done. We knew there were [elderly] people and children in there. Our concern was keeping everyone, including police officers, out of harm's way."
Fearing for children
Alicia Francis said she dropped her two children off at the day-care center about 11 a.m. and drove the four blocks back to her home. Once there, she saw on television what was happening.
"I was shaking. I was crying. We didn't know if he could get through to where the kids were. You don't know what someone will do when they're [acting] crazy," she said.
She and her husband, Errol, ran to the center but couldn't' see what was happening. They returned home and then saw on television the children were being escorted from the building.
"There's so much relief now," she said, holding Marli, 2, while a smiling Errol tightly hugged Kyara, 5.
Nearby, Daniella Arrendondo comforted her son, Orlando, 3, and daughter, Desree, 2.
"I was scared, crying," she said. "All we knew was he was in the building with a gun."
She looked at her kids.
"He looks like he's been crying. She doesn't know what's going on. I want to take them home now and tell them everything's OK."
But inside the building, everything still wasn't OK. On the first floor, Taylor ran in and out of offices, frightening four people in wheelchairs in an adult day-care center and other people in a doctor's office.
Eventually, he was confined to the southeast hallway where Fisher, from 40 feet away, began what would become two hours of successful negotiations.
Victims treated
Kroll was transferred from LifeCare to UPMC Presbyterian and arrived just after 11:45 a.m. in "very critical" condition, said Dr. John Cole, who along with other emergency room surgeons worked on the severely wounded maintenance man. The bullet had entered just above the clavicle in the middle of his chest and traveled through to his right chest, rupturing his lung.
"He was obviously in very bad shape," said Dr. Ricard Townsend, a trauma surgeon at the hospital. "He had a significant amount of blood loss."
Doctors said they worked on Kroll between 10 and 15 minutes before he died. He did not have a pulse during that time, doctors said.
At Mercy Hospital, Healy was pronounced dead at 12:41 p.m.
The other victims remained in critical condition last night at UPMC Presbyterian.
One had a gunshot wound to his head. Doctors said the bullet went through the man's brain. He arrived comatose and was being treated in the intensive care unit.
Another victim suffered a gunshot wound to the right side of his head. Doctors said the man was "conversant" before entering the operating room.
The third man was shot in the right side of his face, causing multiple facial fractures. However, doctors said, the bullet did not enter his brain. The victim was awake and talking when he arrived at the emergency room, doctors said, but they later inserted a tube down his throat to facilitate his breathing.
About 50 people from Presby's disaster plan team were in the emergency room helping tend to the four victims. In addition to trauma and general surgeons, nursing staff from intensive care units, anesthesiologists, social workers and housekeeping staff were on hand.
Townsend said the hospital initially was told to expect as many as 12 shooting victims.
Police praised
As bad as everything was yesterday in Wilkinsburg, it could have been much worse had not police responded and performed so effectively, Brewer and Young said.
"It all happened so fast. First there's a report of a gunshot victim, then the fire, then a person down at Burger King, then multiple gunshot victims at McDonald's. We were scrambling at that point," Brewer said.
"It was major teamwork from everyone concerned that kept the incident from getting any worse."
Civilians drew accolades also. A pastor who helped counsel McDonald's employees at a nearby church said that were it not for their bravery, their assistant manager would probably have died on the spot.
"Human instinct would tell you to run when someone has a gun," said the Rev. Janet Hellner-Burris, pastor of the Christian Church of Wilkinsburg, who joined many other area pastors in ministering to McDonald's employees at the Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, the church closest to the crime scene.
Instead, "when Steve went down, the employees rallied and applied pressure to his head and got him into the ambulance.
"They don't feel like it right now, but they truly are heroes. They saved that man's life."
Taylor was arraigned at 9:30 p.m. at the county coroner's office and charged with two counts of criminal homicide. He faces a preliminary hearing March 13 at 10 a.m.
Staff writers Steve Levin, Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Milan Simonich and Johnna A. Pro contributed to this report.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
