Angelina Stone, the 24-year-old pregnant mother killed in Friday’s mass shooting in Erie, Pennsylvania, was shot by her own father, according to her family, and the death toll has now risen to 10 with the loss of her unborn son, Kyrie.
Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook confirmed to Erie News Now on Saturday afternoon that the official count now includes the baby. Stone was eight months pregnant and due to give birth on October 14, a date she had shared on social media. Her son Isiah, 5, and her daughter Amari’anna, who was weeks away from turning 2, were also killed.
Erie police have not publicly identified the shooter, and have only described him as a 45-year-old man who was related to seven of the eight people he killed. Stone’s family has filled in the rest. Juicesiyah Alexander Ezekiel, Amari’anna’s father, told Erie News Now that the gunman was Stone’s father, which would make him the grandfather of both children.
“It was my baby, bro, and he just took her,” Ezekiel said of his daughter.
A GoFundMe organized by Aaliyah Williams, Amari’anna’s aunt, says the same thing. Angelina’s father killed Angelina and her children in a murder suicide, and now our family is facing the painful task of laying them to rest,” Williams wrote. The money raised will go to Amari’anna’s father to cover funeral arrangements for Angelina, Isiah, Amari’anna and Kyrie.
The shooting happened around 4:53 p.m. Friday at a home on the 700 block of Perry Street on Erie’s east side, after a ShotSpotter alert picked up two gunshots. Police believe the gunman opened fire inside the house first, then walked outside and killed two women, ages 51 and 37, who were found in front of the home. Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said doorbell cameras captured the two women, described as a sister-in-law and a family friend, pounding on the door before the shots.
Inside, officers found Isiah and Amari’anna on the first floor. On a second floor stairwell, they found Stone along with a 44-year-old woman, a 19-year-old man and a 21-year-old man. Police said everyone killed inside lived in the home. The gunman was found on the second floor with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound and a .40 caliber handgun registered to him on his person.
Police surrounded the house and sent in a SWAT team, which breached several doors and used a robot to search inside. Lorah said sounds initially mistaken for gunfire during the standoff were actually flash bangs and chemical munitions fired by SWAT. Investigators later determined that every victim was already dead, and the gunman had already taken his own life, before officers arrived.
The coroner’s office has ruled the deaths homicides and the gunman’s death a suicide. Lorah said it was too soon to discuss a motive. Police have not released the names of any of the victims.
Lisa Simmers, a family friend, told local media that Stone “was pregnant, about to have her baby in a couple days.”
Ezekiel said he had moved away from Erie to escape a dangerous lifestyle, only to come back and lose his daughter and the mother of his child. “I come back and lose my daughter, lose my baby mom, lose who I was fighting to stay alive for,” he said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is among the officials who have offered condolences to the Erie community.
