Four dead after shooting at car wash

A man suspected of gunning down four people at a Pennsylvania car wash was driven by jealousy, according to family members of the shooting victims.

State police said Timothy Smith, 28, was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, a .308-calibre rifle and a handgun and was wearing a body armour carrier without the ballistic panels inserted when he opened fire early Sunday morning at Ed’s Car Wash in Saltlick Township, a rural town about 90 kilometres southeast of Pittsburgh.

Twenty-seven-year-old William Porterfield, 25-year-old Chelsie Cline, 23-year-old Courtney Snyder and 21-year-old Seth Cline were all killed.

Smith was on life support Sunday and not expected to survive after suffering a gunshot wound to his head. State police said it was possible that the gunshot wound was self-inflicted.

Authorities would not reveal how Smith knew the victims, but Chelsie Cline’s half-sister, Sierra Kolarik, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that Smith had developed an obsession with Cline.

Cline shared a meme on her Facebook page last week that read, “After this week, I rlly (sic) need to get taken out ... on a date or by a sniper either one is fine w me at this point.” A Facebook friend of hers named Tim Smith replied, “I could do both.”

Porterfield’s pregnant wife, Jenna Porterfield, 24, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that a state police investigator told her that Smith was a jealous former boyfriend of Cline.

Porterfield said that she was told by family members of other victims that her husband and Cline had spent the past two days together after Cline ended a relationship with Smith. Porterfield said that she and her husband — who were married in November — had been “having some troubles” this month.

“I’m not holding that against Will. We weren’t fighting. We were fixing.”