Pittsburgh Shooting Press Conference 4/17/22 Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:04)
Thanks for being here. Sadly, I wish we weren’t. As you know last night, shortly after 12:30 midnight, our Zone 1 had repeated reports from ShotSpotter of multiple rounds being fired. They arrived on scene and there was a large crowd out in a street on Sussman and Madison and some of the surrounding areas.

Speaker 1: (00:36)
It was a very chaotic scene. The officers from across the city came to assist. We had the Pennsylvania State Police and other outside jurisdictions to help from the complexity of the size of the multiple-crime scenes, the crowd, and trying to get help to the people that needed it.

Speaker 1: (00:59)
The medics arrived and were able to help transport victims. They were self-transported, and officers as well, trying to get victims the help that they needed at the hospital.

Speaker 1: (01:13)
We had calls that came in for victims at various hospitals outside the city of Pittsburgh as well and, sadly, we had two victims from gunshot wounds die, both under the age of 18. We had an additional eight that suffered gunshot wounds that are being treated for their injuries.

Speaker 1: (01:42)
Then we had additional five victims who were injured due to whether jumping from windows, falling down steps, or just trying to seek cover and get out of the area and were injured. Then we had a couple more victims, one from their car being shot up and another one from a non-injury-related incident.

Speaker 1: (02:10)
It’s heartbreaking. I mean here we are Easter and we have multiple families, two that won’t see a loved one, others that are going to be no … How can you even have a holiday when your child was involved in something traumatic like this?

Speaker 1: (02:32)
And all the others who were at the incident. This is traumatizing to our officers who didn’t heed when a call came in for multiple shots fired. I’m talking the ShotSpotters came in for over 90 rounds. We know there was a lot more than that between inside the structure and outside that. But those officers didn’t heed a second. They went in and tried to help people and get people the care that they needed, and try to really connect the multiple-crime scenes that were located throughout that area.

Speaker 1: (03:12)
So I can’t say enough about the officers for what they did, but now we got to focus on getting those who were involved with this shooting.

Speaker 2: (03:24)
[inaudible 00:03:24].

Speaker 1: (03:24)
I don’t want to speak prematurely, but our computer crimes is working diligently on obtaining all the video that they can. We know there’s hundreds of people that were there. We ask you to come forward, because these are your friends. These are people you’re associating with. If you have pictures, if you have video, send it to the link so we can use use it. It’s upon all of us to work together to make sure we take these shooters off the street.

Speaker 1: (03:59)
That’s what it’s all about. You’ve got to get these shooters off the street, the ones who continue to prey on the public in our communities. We need to get them off the street.

Speaker 1: (04:07)
I appreciate the fact that the FBI, the ATF called earlier this morning offering any assistance they could. We had the Allegheny County Police and the Allegheny County Sheriff’s reaching out as well, asking if we needed any help from them.

Speaker 1: (04:29)
I’ve said this before, but people always ask, where are these guns coming from? That’s one of the things myself and Lou from the ATF talked about summer of last year, on we’ve really got to figure out where these guns are coming from, especially for the youth. Where are they getting these guns? And …