Prosecutor: ‘No doubt’ gunman was targeting police officers

There’s “no doubt” a gunman who fired at police in several locations in the state capital, wounding one of them before they shot and killed him, was targeting police officers, a prosecutor said.

Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty fired at a Harrisburg police officer on Friday afternoon and later at a state trooper, wounding and then pursuing her, Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said.

“He fired several shots at a Capitol police officer and at a Pennsylvania state police trooper in marked vehicles,” Marsico told reporters, flanked by state police, Capitol police and FBI officials.

The gunfire began shortly after 4 p.m. Friday, when the man fired several shots at a state Capitol officer in downtown Harrisburg, striking his car several times and sending one shot “that went very close to hitting him,” Marsico said. About 20 or 30 minutes later, he fired several shots at the state trooper, striking her with one of those shots.

The trooper is “doing well,” is in good condition and is expected to make a full recovery, Marsico said.

El-Mofty pursued the trooper to a residential neighborhood, where city and state police encountered him.

“He approached them with two handguns … firing many shots at those police officers,” and the officers returned fire, killing him, Marsico said.

El-Mofty had ties to the Middle East and recently traveled there, but the motive for the attack was unknown, Marsico said.

Marsico asked for information from the public about the man, who also had ties to the city and its western suburbs across the Susquehanna River. He declined to comment on whether the man was known to police.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said Saturday he had talked to the director of Homeland Security as federal, state and local law enforcement authorities investigate “last night’s attack on law enforcement.”

“I again want to thank officers who put themselves in harm’s way to prevent further injury or loss of life,” he said in a message on Twitter.

Marsico also expressed gratitude to state and local police for bringing a rapid end to an episode he said could have been much worse.

“This could have been a really tragic incidence with this individual firing many shots at police cars in downtown Harrisburg in the midst of rush hour traffic on a Friday afternoon and then coming up here in a residential neighborhood and firing again many shots,” he said.

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Coroner Releases Causes Of Death For All 58 Victims Of Las Vegas Shooting

The 58 fatalities in October’s mass shooting in Las Vegas all died of gunshot wounds, the county coroner and medical examiner said Thursday. A makeshift memorial on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip a few days after the shooting has photos of some of those who were killed.

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

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Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

The 58 fatalities in October’s mass shooting in Las Vegas all died of gunshot wounds, the county coroner and medical examiner said Thursday. A makeshift memorial on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip a few days after the shooting has photos of some of those who were killed.

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

All 58 of the people killed in the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1 died of gunshot wounds, the Clark County County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner has determined.

Nearly all of the fatalities were caused by a single gunshot wound, though six victims died from multiple wounds. Most had been shot in the head, chest or back. The deaths were all ruled homicides.

In the chaos of the shooting, in which bullets rained down on a country music festival from a gunman on the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel, it wasn’t immediately clear whether any victims might have died from trampling as the crowds sought to escape the fusillade.

The shooter, Stephen Paddock, died from a gunshot wound to the head that entered through the mouth. His cause of death was a suicide, the coroner’s office said.

Coroner John Fudenberg told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that it has taken more than two months to release the information because his office wanted to be accurate and notify the victims’ families first.

“Because of the impact that this incident had on our community, and the attention that this incident received, it became very important for us to ensure that all of the families had the information prior to us releasing it to the public,” Fudenberg told the newspaper.

More than 500 people were injured during the shooting, and thousands of others who were there at the Route 91 Harvest Festival have been trying to cope in the months since the tragedy.

One woman who was there, Melissa Barham, recently told NPR’s Weekend Edition that since the massacre, she’s been and sad depressed, and wonders whether anything has really changed since the Sandy Hook shooting five years ago.

“I wake up every morning and I journal,” Barham said. “I pick one of the victims and I write down their name and their age and where they’re from and then just details about them. And I just think about them.”

“And this time of year, the holidays, make it really hard.”

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