A 26-year-old homeless man, Andre Gordon, opened fire and killed three people today near Philadelphia, before fleeing in a stolen car and barricading himself in a New Jersey home with several hostages. Ultimately, the police managed to avoid further dramatic events by arresting the young man as he tried to escape. The alarm was raised around 8:50 a.m. local time when Gordon shot and killed his sister Cara Gordon, 13, and stepmother Karen Gordon in Falls Township. Then, a few blocks away, he struck again, killing the woman he had two children with, Taylor Daniel, 25, and also injuring her mother. Then Gordon left on foot and, in a parking lot, stopped a man and stole his car. Police immediately responded to the scene of the shooting and, for safety reasons, canceled the St. Patrick's Day parade, closed all children's parks and urged residents in the area to stay home and keep away from windows. With the stolen car, Gordon left Pennsylvania and headed to Trenton, New Jersey, where he lives. Here he barricaded himself in a house with hostages. Also in this case, according to what the police reported, these were people the man knew, probably members of his family. Agents and special teams,
including Swat, immediately surrounded the house, ready to intervene to arrest the man, described by police as “armed and extremely dangerous”. After more than an hour of fear, the hostages were “successfully evacuated” while Gordon remained barricaded for hours before being arrested while trying to escape. The reasons for the 26-year-old's crazy series of criminal actions are still unclear. Falls Township police said they had “contact with the killer in the past, but there is no evidence to suggest such action.” His criminal record, according to rumors, is clean and the man has never shown signs of mental imbalance. Federal authorities will also relentlessly untangle the tangle of issues so far, as the man crossed the state line and the law provides for the deployment of government forces in such cases.
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