Police say Dormont garage owner shot robber
-
Police cordon off the area of a shooting behind West Liberty Avenue in Dormont. The truck was used to deliver recycled auto parts. Allegheny County Police Assistant Superintendent James Morton said a 39-year-old man armed with a handgun and a stun gun entered Bill's Auto Service in Limha Way, an alley behind the 2900 block of West Liberty Avenue, around 11 a.m. He said that the owner shot the robber.
Share with others:
Police said a pistol-wielding robber used a stun gun on a Dormont garage owner and a delivery man and held them at gunpoint Thursday before the owner grabbed his own gun and shot the man dead.
Allegheny County homicide detectives found a 39-year-old man lying in a pool of blood in the snow outside Bill's Auto Service, a single-bay garage on Limha Way, an alley behind the 2900 block of West Liberty Avenue. He was pronounced dead at the scene, but the medical examiner's office did not release his identity Thursday pending notification of next of kin.
"He had the victims' possessions on his body when we found him," including the delivery man's wallet, county police Assistant Superintendent James Morton said. The district attorney's office will determine whether the shop owner, Bill Miller, was justified in shooting the man, who police said had come to rob the business.
It was the third shooting in the county in less than a week in which an intended victim killed his aggressor.
On Monday, a Wilkinsburg man disarmed and fatally shot another man who had assaulted him inside a Sharpsburg townhouse. And on Dec. 10, a 20-year-old woman fatally shot a teenager after wrestling his gun from him when he tried to rob her on a darkened Munhall street.
All three cases remain under investigation, said district attorney spokesman Mike Manko, who declined to comment further.
Thursday's shooting happened just after 11 a.m., when the man attempted to rob Mr. Miller and the other man, whom police did not identify but said was delivering a shipment of auto parts.
The man threatened them, shocked them with a stun gun and ordered them to their knees, where he held them at gunpoint, police said.
Mr. Miller also had a gun, which he was able to retrieve and fire, striking the man once. The suspect collapsed near the driver's side of the other man's large, white delivery truck.
Mr. Morton said the two men were the only ones inside the shop, which is about as small as a single-car garage, when the robber approached. Detectives, he said, were still trying to learn "everyone's position in the garage."
Neither Mr. Miller nor his attorney could not be reached for comment.
Police did not say whether the man acted alone, but about 6:30 p.m., police asked officers across the county to be on the lookout for a white Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo that may have been used in the robbery. At 7:15 p.m., police said the vehicle had been located, though homicide detectives couldn't be reached for further details.
The morning gunfire drew curious onlookers from homes and businesses on the busy stretch of West Liberty Avenue.
George Lampman, 43, who lives across Limha Alley, said he heard a "thump" and later looked outside to find the alley flooded with officers stringing crime scene tape.
Nicole Asplund said she and other employees at Tom's Diner, which abuts the alley, thought they heard a car backfire but "the next thing we knew the police were here. That's why people are shocked -- it's a pretty safe part of town."
First Published December 17, 2010 12:00 am
