Fight, gunfire outside Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh sparked by child's shooting hours earlier
Jun. 11—A fight between two sides of a child's family over her shooting led to another shooting Thursday night in front of UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, according to police.
The fight was sparked by a shooting hours earlier in the city's Homewood section, investigators said. In that incident, a 6-year-old girl was critically injured when she was shot in the abdomen. She was taken to Children's Hospital in critical condition.
About four hours later, a fight involving at least 30 broke out in front of the Penn Avenue hospital, according to police. Shots were fired, injuring two people: one man was shot multiple times and left in critical condition, while another man did not notice he'd been wounded until he returned home.
Police ultimately arrested 22-year-old Gerald Porter in connection with the shooting outside the hospital. He is charged with four counts of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless endangerment.
Porter told police he'd been at a funeral for a friend in Homestead earlier in the day Thursday before he received word his 6-year-old cousin had been shot, according to the criminal complaint. He said he went to the hospital to support his family, and the two sides of the family began arguing with each other outside.
Porter said he saw a man begin punching his uncle, who is also the injured 6-year-old's uncle, according to the complaint. He said he was scared, so he pulled a gun from his pocket and fired at the man, police said. He told officers he thought he fired twice.
Asked if he thought he might have accidently shot anyone else, Porter told police he wasn't sure, according to the complaint. Police informed Porter he'd shot his uncle as well as the man he was fighting. Porter's uncle was the man who did not discover he'd been wounded until later.
No arrest has been made in connection with the shooting of the 6-year-old girl, and authorities offered few details about the circumstances.
That shooting and the subsequent incident outside the hospital were among several shootings Thursday night in Allegheny County. About 8:15 p.m., a ShotSpotter alert sent police to East Hills Drive in the city's East Hills neighborhood. The man injured in that shooting was taken to the hospital by someone else. Around 9:40 p.m., a 15-year-old boy received non-life threatening injuries in a shooting in Edgewood on Walnut Street.
No charges have been filed in those shootings.
Megan Guza is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, mguza@triblive.com or via Twitter .
