Officials declined to identify the suspect shot by police during a raid at an apartment Friday morning in East Vandergrift.
The man was shot during a police raid led by the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force around 7 a.m. Friday, according to state police.
Residents say the raid targeted an apartment above the post office on McKinley Avenue.
Vandergrift police confirmed they played a support role in the operation but had no other information.
The suspect was taken into custody and transported to a hospital for treatment, according to Trooper Clifford Greenfield, state police spokesman.
Greenfield declined to share the suspect’s identity and said he did not have any update on his condition Friday.
No officers were injured, Greenfield said.
Phil Cornelius, chief deputy U.S. Marshal for Western Pennsylvania, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Authorities remained on scene much of the day.
Anthony Buyny, who lives a few doors down, said he was stepping out of the shower Friday morning when he heard authorities order a suspect to “drop the gun” and “get on the ground.”
A burst of gunfire followed.
Vandergrift resident Lisa Dormire recalled hearing commotion from her home on Franklin Avenue, overlooking East Vandergrift.
Like Buyny, she told TribLive she could hear yelling, and then gunshots.
“I was surprised it was in East Vandergrift, because it sounded closer,” Dormire said.
State and local police had been ramping up activity in the area over the course of the week, according to Alex Rosa, whose home borders the half-block perimeter established by police.
A suit-wearing, clipboard-carrying agent, who was present at the scene Friday, recently came by his house and interviewed his mother.
The post office shutdown snarled life in tiny East Vandergrift more than it would have in most other towns.
Jeff Crosbie was walking from his home on the other side of town — the Postal Service does not deliver mail directly to borough residents — when he noticed clusters of police vehicles blocking his destination.
“That’s like the hub of this town,” Crosbie said. “That’s where people meet and talk.”
Without that town square of sorts, a few East Vandergrift residents instead lingered by the crime scene in the bitter cold, trying to piece together the events of the morning.
Not even post office worker Kirk Ebel had an inside track on what happened.
“I showed up to work this morning, (and) the ambulance was pulling away,” he said.
