Two die in McKeesport shooting

Man, woman were inside parked car

As soon as Rakell Greene crested the hill by the crime scene, she knew her father was dead.

The coroner was there, and the police, and the news vans.

She ran toward the yellow tape. An officer stopped her, and she begged him to tell her who was dead.

“I’m his only daughter,” she told him. “Please.”

He asked her father’s name, and she told him: Raffel Greene.

The officer shook his head. Her father was dead.

“I went berserk,” said Ms. Greene, of McKeesport, whose mother had banged on her door about 4 a.m. and said something terrible had happened.

Greene, 49, of Clairton, was shot in the neck about 12:20 a.m. Thursday inside a car parked in a lot at the Crawford Village complex off Grandview Avenue in McKeesport. A woman in the car with him, Jessica Taylor, 32, of Finleyville, was also killed.

Greene ran from the vehicle after he was shot and died in the street. Ms. Taylor never left the car, according to Allegheny County Police Lt. Andrew Schurman.

Investigators haven’t given a motive for the attack or named a suspect. Neither Ms. Taylor nor Greene lived in the

neighborhood.

Ms. Greene has no idea why her father was at that apartment complex.

“There was no reason for him to be over there,” she said. “I believe he was set up and robbed.”

Her father used heroin and cocaine. But she doesn’t know if he was there to buy drugs, she said. Court records show Greene had been arrested at least 18 times in Allegheny County between 1987 and February — most often on drug or theft charges.

In February, he was stopped for driving with a suspended license in Clairton and then arrested after an officer discovered a bag of heroin in his pocket, as well as a crack pipe, a straw used to snort heroin, and $747, according to a criminal complaint. The misdemeanor charges were pending when he died.

Despite his drug use, Greene was dedicated to his family, his daughter said.

He cared for his 80-yearold mother and doted on his grandchildren. He was on disability and didn’t work, she said, suffering from severe arthritis.

“He was loving, funny, full of life,” Ms. Greene said. “He always wanted to go out and have fun. There was never a dull moment with him.”

She last saw her father on Wednesday, when she and her 5-year-old daughter stopped by for an unannounced visit. Greene was on his way to play bingo, Ms. Greene said. He told her to call him afterward.

But when she called later that night, her father never answered.