Man accused of opening fire on state agents, officer
An agent with the state Attorney General’s office and a McKees Rocks police officer took on dozens of gunshots late last month when men inside a black Lincoln they were tailing abruptly stopped in the street and opened fire, according to police.
Eric Nathaniel Durah Jr., 25, was taken into custody Thursday, charged with multiple counts of attempted homicide and aggravated assault.
The shootout, which happened mid-afternoon on Feb. 27 in a dead-end alley that runs under Tunnel Way in McKees Rocks, forced Officer Eric Cersosimo and an unnamed AG’s agent to duck beneath the dashboard of their unmarked vehicle to avoid gunfire.
The two law enforcement officers, both assigned to a narcotics task force in the AG’s office, fired 25 shots of their own before the alleged shooters took off. No injuries were reported.
It was their second encounter with the black Lincoln that day. Around 12:30 p.m., the pair spotted a man later identified as Durah come out of a home on Pine Hollow Road and get into the black Lincoln. One of the agents knew of Durah from “associations with gangs and had been arrested previously for firearms and drugs.”
They began following the
Lincoln in their unmarked Chevy Impala, but the driver took off and began driving recklessly through traffic, according to a criminal complaint. They lost sight of the Lincoln but saw it again when it drove past them on the Windgap Bridge. They alerted McKees Rocks police for assistance to pull over the Lincoln, as AG’s vehicles aren’t equipped with lights and sirens.
They again lost sight of the car on West Carson Street.
About an hour later, an agent and Officer Cersosimo spotted the Lincoln on Broadway Avenue near Dohrman Street in Stowe Township. The pair again began to trail behind the Lincoln, all the while announcing their location over police radio.
The Lincoln stopped on Lower Benwood Avenue, and three men inside the car immediately began shooting, police said, forcing the officers to duck for cover below the dashboard.
During a pause in the gunfire, both officers returned fire, with the officers taking cover behind their open car doors. The Lincoln then took off.\ again. Investigators later determined the men in the Lincoln fired at least 44 rounds at the officers, 26 of which were rifle fire.
The officers’ Chevy Impala was hit multiple times, investigators said. One bullet when through the center of the windshield.
Meanwhile, a second AG agent who was in the area working the same investigation, took off after the Lincoln once she heard the gunfire.
She told police she used her unmarked Chevy Malibu to hit the Lincoln in an attempt to stop it. The men in the car fired at her multiple times as she gave chase, according to the complaint, until her Malibu ultimately stalled out near the West End.
The black Lincoln was found in flames about 4:30 p.m. the same day in Pittsburgh’s Mt. Washington neighborhood, police said. Though it was severely burned and the plate was removed, investigators determined it was Durah’s vehicle.
Working backward, investigators used surveillance footage to piece together the entire series of events.
On Mt. Washington, footage showed someone driving the Lincoln onto Paur Street about 4:21 p.m. A gray Jeep SUV parked nearby, and someone got out and walked toward the Lincoln about a minute later. A few minutes after that, they run from the Lincoln, which was then on fire, and took off in the Jeep, police said.
The Jeep was a rental car that came from the Avis Rental agency at Pittsburgh International Airport. It was rented to Durah’s sister, who lives on Pittsburgh’s North Side.
Investigators found the vehicle on the North Side. Inside, police found a Taurus .38 special handgun that had been reported stolen, three cell phones and a bag of Kingsford charcoal in a Dollar General bag.
Surveillance footage from a Dollar General about two blocks away from Durah’s sister’s home showed a man paying cash for lighter fluid and a bag of Kingsford charcoal just before 3:30 p.m. — about an hour before the Lincoln was found in flames.
Computer data from the burned Lincoln showed Durah’s cell phone was connected to the car for a majority of the afternoon the day of the shooting, and GPS information shows the car’s path before, during and after the shooting.
Allegheny County police filed the charges against Durah on March 10. He was taken into custody at a home in Penn Hills Thursday morning by SWAT officers and U.S. Marshals.
Court records did not list an attorney for Durah as of Thursday afternoon. A preliminary hearing is not yet scheduled.