Pennsylvania Shootings: At Least 5 Dead, Gunman Is Marine Vet, Cops Say [Breaking — Updated]
A series of shootings in suburban Pennsylvania killed at least five people Monday morning, and the gunman police believe carried out the rampage was holed up in a home in Montgomery County, surrounded by SWAT officers as of 10:30 a.m. local time in this breaking story.
What police called an “active barricade situation” was underway at Highland and Penn Avenues in Souderton, Pennsylvania, less than an hour north of Philadelphia.
UPDATE 3:25 PM EST: A suspect has now been identified. Please access the Inquisitr story at this link for full details. Further updates will also be posted on that page.
UPDATE 2:05 PM EST: A Marine veteran is barricaded in a house in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, at this hour. Witnesses say they heard several loud explosions from a house on Fourth Stree, near the Main Street and Route 663 in the suburban town.
Police could be heard speaking to the suspect inside the house through a loudspeaker saying, “Bradley, come out with your hands up!”
Whether “Bradley” is the suspect’s first name or surname is not clear.
UPDATE 1:05 PM EST: The military veteran suspected in the suburban Pennsylvania shooting rampage killed his ex-wife whom he had been “tormenting” for years, a neighbor of the ex-wife told the AllentownMorning Call newspaper. Names of the suspect and victims have not been released.
The ex-wife has warned police that her former husband was going to kill her, the paper reported, also reporting that the suspect had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
UPDATE 12:40 PM EST: A teenager was found injured at the Souderton scene, according to WPVI, but the gunman remains at large at this time.
The “shelter in place” order for Souderton area schools was been lifted earlier.
Police were also investigating crime scenes in the Harleysville area of Lower Salford and in Landsdale, Pennsylvania. At the Harleyville location, bullet holes were visible in a structure there, and CSI teams were gathering evidence from the scene, according to an NBC Philadelphia report.
At 8:45 a.m., schools in the Souderton Area School District were handed a “shelter in place” area, meaning that no one was permitted to enter or leave the school buildings. However, all students in the schools covered by the order were reportedly safe.
Police responded to the Lansdale scene around 5:45 a.m., but pulled back three hours later.
SWAT teams were also called to a scene in Pennsburg, the fourth location apparently connected to the alleged shooting spree in the suburbs of Philadelphia, according to a report from Philly’s WPVI-TV.
While it is not yet known what police may have found at that fourth scene, five people were found apparently shot to death at the three other locations.
All of the shooting victims were shot at close range and include at least one woman, who was found dead at 3:55 a.m. in the 100 block of Main Street in Lower Salford. Two more people were found killed about 30 minutes later on West 5th St. in Lansdale, while two more deceased victims were discovered in Souderton, at Franklin and Garfield Streets, according to the WPVI report.
Police had not released information on the identity of the suspected gunman in the suburban Philadelphia shootings, except to say that the suspect is a male, and a veteran of the military. More on the standoff as it develops.
