Eight Dead, Including Pregnant Mother and Three Children, in Erie Home Shooting

Eight people, including a pregnant mother, her 5-year-old son, her toddler daughter and her unborn child, were killed Friday evening in a shooting at a home in Erie, Pennsylvania. The gunman, believed by relatives to be the mother’s father, is also dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, bringing the total death toll to nine.

Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said officers were called to the 700 block of Perry Road on the city’s East Side at approximately 4:53 p.m. Friday after the department’s ShotSpotter system detected gunfire. Arriving officers found two women, ages 37 and 51, shot in the street outside the house.

The gunman then barricaded himself inside, forcing a standoff while police waited for a search warrant before entering. Once inside, officers found three children dead on the first floor: 5-year-old Isiah, toddler Amari’anna, and a 10-month-old girl. On the second floor, police found the pregnant mother, Angelina Stone, along with a 44-year-old woman and two men, ages 19 and 21.

“It was horrific. It was the worst scene I have ever experienced,” Lorah said at a press conference.

Stone was due to give birth on October 14, just days after the shooting, according to a social media post. She had planned to name the child Kyrie.

Police have not publicly identified the 45-year-old gunman, but relatives say he was Stone’s father. “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,” Aaliyah Williams, aunt of Stone’s daughter, wrote in a GoFundMe post.

Family friend Lisa Simmers described the toll on those who knew Stone. “She was pregnant, about to have her baby in a couple days and she had a daughter that was almost 2 and her son Isiah and they were all just beautiful,” Simmers told Erie News Now.

“Her two babies were on the spectrum. Innocent children, couldn’t have told on that man if they wanted to, and he still killed them,” Simmers told CBS Pittsburgh. “A crime like that, what do you say? A person kills two innocent children, a pregnant woman and the people coming to try to help her.”

Simmers said she and others had gathered outside the home as the shooting unfolded. “It’s mind-blowing to me to understand what was happening in that house while we were standing outside. The feeling of helplessness and knowing we couldn’t do anything and she was right there,” she said.

Amari’anna’s father, Juicesiyah Alexander Ezekiel, spoke of losing his daughter. “It was my baby, bro, and he just took her,” Ezekiel told Erie News Now. “Her name was Amari’anna. She’s the most beautiful baby God could have created.”

Ezekiel said he had survived a homicide in Erie in 2022 and had since struggled with depression after moving away from the area. “I’m so broken, man,” he said. “I left Erie to stay away from that lifestyle, and I come back and lose my daughter, lose my baby mom, lose who I was fighting to stay alive for.”

Eight of the nine people killed were related to one another; the ninth was identified as a family friend. Lorah said he believes “mental health is at play here” but has not offered a specific motive for the shooting.