Children and workers from a daycare center at the West Penn Center in Wilkinsburg, Pa., are evacuated after being held hostage today. (AP)
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Two killed in Pennsylvania
fast-food shootings
Three others wounded in apparent racial attack
By Chriss Swaney, Reuters, 03/01/00
WILKINSBURG, Pa. - A black gunman who told a neighbor he intended to shoot only white people killed two white men and critically wounded three others Wednesday before surrendering to police after a bloody rampage near Pittsburgh.
The killings came a day after a 6-year-old boy stunned the U.S. public by shooting dead a girl his own age at a Michigan elementary school. President Bill Clinton said both shootings underlined a need for gun laws "to keep America safer."
The suspect, identified as 39-year-old Ronald Taylor, killed a maintenance man at about 10:30 a.m. EST in a row over a door repair at his apartment in the borough of Wilkinsburg. He set fire to the residence and walked to a commercial area armed with a .22 caliber pistol and a knife.
There, police said, he shot three men at a McDonald's restaurant and a fourth at a Burger King, and entered an office complex where he took several hostages, including as many as five wheelchair-bound medical patients, before surrendering to a Pittsburgh police negotiator shortly before 2:15 p.m.
An elderly man who was shot at McDonald's later died at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The dead were identified as 71-year-old Joseph Healy of Wilkinsburg and John Kroll, 55, of Cabot, Pennsylvania.
Hospital officials warned that the death toll could rise, saying the three others were in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, including one who was in a coma.
Authorities said all five shooting victims were white men.
Police refused to speculate about what they believe motivated Taylor.
But Wilkinsburg Mayor Wilbert Young told Reuters that the suspect had warned the manager of his apartment building earlier not to send white repairmen to his home. The mayor also said that two repairmen -- one white and one black -- had gone to Taylor's home but that Taylor had only shot the white man.
A woman from Taylor's neighborhood told reporters that he had walked into her home before leaving the apartment building and promised he would not hurt any black people.
"I'm gonna kill all white people," the woman quoted him as saying in an interview aired on CNN.
"How can you cope with a situation like this?" Mayor Young said. "We are in a state of shock. We've seen things like this on TV but never thought it would happen in our own community.
Wilkinsburg is an economically depressed community that was once home to blue-collar steelworkers. It lies about 6 miles (9.6 km) from outside Pittsburgh.
Authorities were forced to evacuate hundreds of people from the area, including patients at a senior citizens home and an estimated 70 children from a day care center on the third floor of the complex where the gunman had been holed up.
"The police used extraordinary restraint in dealing with the suspect," Wilkinsburg Police Chief Gerald Brewer told a news conference. "They did not try to make a show of force."
In the aftermath of the shooting spree, the media became a communications conduit for some of the people trapped inside the office building while the gunman remained at large.
"All we want to know is that the police know that we are here and we're safe," a woman huddled in a health-care office with 10 others told WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh.
"We want to be sure that nobody forgets about us," she said.
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