Two dead after suspected murder-suicide in Hays
Two people are dead in what officials are calling an apparent murder-suicide following a hostage situation and SWAT callout in Hays early Monday morning.
Pittsburgh police responded around 1:40 a.m. to a duplex in the 700 block of Baldwin Road, where they received a report of a barricaded man with a possible hostage. Police said in a statement that another man who had escaped the residence notified a Munhall police officer, who then called Pittsburgh police.
When officers arrived, they called the SWAT team after the man refused to leave the home. Police said that when SWAT officers entered the home, they found a woman with a fatal gunshot wound to the head.
The SWAT officers ordered the man out of the home and eventually fired rounds of gas into the home, public safety spokesman Chris Togneri said in a statement.
Officers went back into the home around 5:40 a.m. and discovered the man with a gunshot wound to the head.
During the incident, Mr. Togneri said, a family of five, including three children, were evacuated from the the adjoining unit. No one in that family was injured, he said.
Lois Obringer, a neighbor who has lived in a home next door to the duplex with her husband, Regis, for decades, said she hasn’t had much interaction with the man and woman involved in the
shooting. They moved to the neighborhood about a year ago, she said.
“I haven’t heard of any issues at the home before,” Mrs. Obringer, 81, said. “I used to feel safe in the neighborhood. Now I don’t feel so safe.”
Her 84-year-old husband said the tear gas that was fired into the home sounded like shotgun blasts in the early hours of the night.
Another neighbor, Tim Graf, 30, said the gas bombs sounded like fireworks, and he initially thought neighbors were celebrating the
Super Bowl.
Mr. Graf has lived in the area for four years with his girlfriend and said they were awakened around 2:30 a.m. by the commotion of authorities outside, when he heard police calling a man’s name and asking him to exit the house.
“I woke up and looked outside and the police were talking over a loudspeaker,” he said. “At some point, the SWAT team climbed on the roof and broke the windows as they unloaded tear gas into the house.”
A few days ago, Mr. Graf said he saw the female victim when her dog ran out into the street. They mostly kept to themselves, he said, noting that he more often saw the family of five who lives in the connecting unit.
“It’s a shame what happened,” he said.
The telephone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a 24/7 telephone link to a national network of crisis centers, is 1800-273-8255.