Police: 2 innocent bystanders killed in North Side shooting
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - The senseless violence on Pittsburgh's North Side this weekend killed two innocent bystanders.
KDKA's Meghan Schiller learned both were mothers just trying to get home. Pittsburgh police identified the two victims as 33-year-old Jacquelyn Mehalic and 59-year-old Betty Averytt.
Paramedics rushed Mehalic, a mother of four, to Allegheny General Hospital, but she didn't make it. Averytt, a mother and grandmother known by many as "Miss Betty," died at the scene.
There's still police tape marking one of the bullet holes at the bus shelter along Cedar Avenue Monday. KDKA talked to people sitting beneath the hole.
"I think it was a very tragic incident without a doubt – two innocent people standing here waiting for the bus to go and they get shot," said Bubba Thornton, North Side resident.
Thornton has lived on the North Side his whole life. He tells KDKA he knows the women sitting here this weekend didn't make it home.
"It's kind of weird to be sitting here without a doubt where this tragic thing occurred," said Thornton.
Pittsburgh police believe a fight started in the nearby gas station parking lot and shots rang out, with bullets flying between the gas station and the nearby park. The bus shelter sits directly in the middle.
"I have heard of them in the community I heard they're wonderful people," said Thornton. "You know like I said, sometimes you got to have more faith than fear."
