Nine dead, including two children, after gunman opens fire in Erie home

A gunman killed eight people, including two children, in and around a house on Erie's east side Friday evening, then died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a tense, hours-long police operation, city officials said Saturday. The confirmed toll of nine dead, announced roughly 15 hours after the first gunshots were reported, makes it one of the deadliest shootings in Pennsylvania's history.

Police said they were called to a home in the 700 block of Perry Street, near East 7th Street, around 5 p.m. Friday after a ShotSpotter gunfire-detection alert and witness calls describing a man firing a weapon before walking into the house. Officers found two women dead in the street outside. Believing the gunman might still be inside and still armed, Erie's SWAT team surrounded the home, sought a search warrant and spent hours working to determine what was happening before entering. Five more victims, including the children, were later found dead inside.

A standoff that wasn't quite a standoff

In a statement posted to its website Saturday, the City of Erie said investigators had determined that all nine deaths occurred before officers ever arrived on scene — correcting an impression, fed by hours of tactical activity outside the house, that the standoff itself may have been ongoing or that shots were still being exchanged. The city said no gunfire was exchanged with police at any point; the loud bangs residents and reporters heard during the response were flash-bangs deployed by the tactical team, not gunshots. Officers arrived with limited information, the city said, including whether anyone remained inside the home or still posed a threat, and continued to reassess as they worked to secure a warrant.

That sequence of events helps explain why early casualty estimates on Friday night and Saturday morning were far lower — some local reports initially cited as few as five dead — before police raised the number to nine as the search of the home was completed and the medical examiner's work got underway.

Eight victims, two of them children

Of the nine people who died, eight were victims and one was the suspected gunman, according to reporting carried by NBC affiliates and consistent with the city's own account. Two of the eight victims were children. Authorities had not released the names or ages of any of the dead, nor the identity or any possible motive of the gunman, as of Saturday afternoon. Erie's police chief, Rick Lorah, said only that his department would not speculate about why the shooting happened while the investigation was active.

The city is still a relatively small place to absorb a loss of this scale. Erie had an estimated population of about 92,957 people as of 2023, the Census Bureau's latest estimate, down slightly from just under 95,000 in 2020 — making it Pennsylvania's fourth-largest city, on the shore of Lake Erie in the state's northwest corner. The surrounding county, whose coroner's office is handling the identification and autopsies of the nine dead, has a population of roughly 267,750. A loss of nine lives in a single incident touches a significant share of a community that size.

'No words that can adequately express the loss'

Chief Lorah, addressing reporters Saturday, described the scene inside and outside the Perry Street home in blunt terms.

"There are no words that can adequately express the magnitude of the loss of life here."

He added, in comments carried by Fox News, that it was among the most difficult scenes his officers and investigators have ever encountered, and that there had been "a large loss of life inside that residence and outside that residence." In a joint statement, the City of Erie and Mayor Daria Devlin, who took office this year, said the situation was contained and posed no ongoing threat to the public. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he had offered his administration's full support to Devlin, calling the shooting a tragedy that killed nine Pennsylvanians and adding, in remarks relayed by CBS News Pittsburgh, "My heart breaks for this family."

The city's statement asked residents and the public to avoid spreading unverified reports and speculation while the investigation continues, and pointed anyone affected toward Crisis Services' local hotline.

What investigators still don't know

As of Saturday afternoon, Erie police had not released the names of the victims, the age of the children killed, the type of weapon or weapons used, or any relationship between the gunman and the household. The Erie Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division and the Erie County Coroner's Office are jointly handling the case. The city and police department scheduled a news conference for 4 p.m. Saturday, to be livestreamed on a local television station's YouTube channel and a news outlet's streaming service, where officials were expected to provide an update on victim identification and the state of the investigation. No officer count or precise standoff duration had been disclosed as of Saturday afternoon, and investigators had not said whether the gunman lived at the Perry Street address or what relationship, if any, he had to the victims.

For Erie, a city of under 100,000 people, Friday's shooting already ranks among the deadliest single incidents in its modern history, and officials cautioned that the full circumstances may not be clear for days. The department's Criminal Investigations Division said it would continue processing the scene and interviewing witnesses through the weekend before releasing further details.