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Police in Pittsburgh had visited the scene of Sunday’s deadly mass shooting at an Airbnb rental about 90 minutes before gunfire erupted for a call of a noise complaint, a report said.
Surveillance footage from a neighbor of the Northside residence appeared to show partygoers and a police vehicle leaving the house around 11 p.m., The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Police confirmed that a neighbor had called in a noise complaint about the underage party.
An hour and a half later, roughly 90 shots were fired inside the crowded home, and in the surrounding streets of the neighborhood, known by locals as Deutschtown.
Two teenagers, 17, were fatally shot and eight others were wounded by gunfire.
Five other victims received injuries in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting as people fled for their lives, jumping out of windows and suffering broken bones and lacerations.
The officer who responded to the noise complaint knocked on the door of the home and was greeted by a man who came down the stairs, the Post-Gazette reported. The officer asked the unidentified man to turn down the music and he obliged.
Before the officer left, he told the man that if he had to return due to another complaint, he would have to shut the party down. The cop left the house without making a report.
As of Monday, no suspects have been identified, according to Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert, in part due to the sheer number of people at the party.
The teens who were killed have been identified by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office as Matthew Steffy-Ross, of Pitcairn, and Jaiden Brown. Both were pronounced dead at the hospital.
Brown was a senior at Woodland Hills High School, the school confirmed. In a letter to the school community, Acting Superintendent Daniel Catagna said that the school – which had been out of Easter break — would be offering counseling services for students and staff.
“Let’s practice patience through this difficult time and be the example our students and families need right now,” he asked of the district’s teachers. “Violence impacts students at all levels and in every building, so tomorrow, more than ever, they need us.”
Steffy-Ross was a student at Grace Non Traditional Christian Academy, the school confirmed to the Post Gazette. He had attended the school, which provides education and career planning to at-risk populations, for only two months before his death.
In a statement following the Easter violence, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey called for action as “our hearts and our prayers go out to the victims’ families, their loved ones, and our entire city…”
“It is critical that we come together now to help reduce the violence currently happening while we begin to do the long-term work of ending the culture of violence that is enabling the senseless loss of life we are experiencing today,” he wrote.
Neighbor Mitchell Wilston, 30, who captured the officer responding to the noise complaint on his security cameras, described the party to the paper as “chaos,” and full of underage kids.
The shooting on Easter morning is the city’s worst since the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in which 11 worshippers were murdered in 2018.
