Investigators walk down the street where two McKeesport police officers were shot, one fatally, on Monday, Feb. 6 2023.
Jillian Forstadt / 90.5 WESA
Mother of McKeesport shooter told emergency dispatchers her son was having a ‘PTSD episode’
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Jillian Forstadt/WESA
Jillian Forstadt / 90.5 WESA
Investigators walk down the street where two McKeesport police officers were shot, one fatally, on Monday, Feb. 6 2023.
Police said the man charged with killing a McKeesport police officer Monday, and wounding one other, was experiencing a mental health crisis stemming from post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to the criminal complaint filed by Allegheny County Homicide detective Greg Renko, two McKeesport Police were dispatched to 1411 Wilson Street to respond to a physical domestic dispute between Johnathan Morris, who is charged with criminal homicide, and Candace Taylor.
Police identified Taylor as Morris’ mother. She called 911 to report her son was acting aggressively toward her and “having a PTSD episode”, the complaint stated.
A shift commander for the McKeesport Police Department, who later exchanged gunfire with Morris, told detectives he heard Morris was a military veteran suffering from PTSD.
Police arrived on the scene at approximately 12:15 p.m. Once there, they learned Morris had fled from the house, with Taylor pointing down the street in the direction he had gone.
Ten minutes later, officer Sean Sluganski notified dispatchers that Morris was now running and appeared to have something “real heavy” in his right hand, obscured in his pocket.
A second officer, Charles Thomas Jr., then reported shots were fired and that he had been struck in the face. Additional police then responded to the scene and found Sluganski unresponsive.
Sluganski was transported to McKeesport Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased at 12:58 p.m.
Detectives located multiple spent shell casings and recovered a semiautomatic pistol they said Morris used during the incident.
Police interviewed two witnesses who encountered Morris as he fled the scene. The witnesses said they were driving on Grandview Avenue when he approached them and said police were trying to kill him.
Morris requested that they film him, to which they agreed and filmed on a cell phone. They said they then observed Morris pull out a firearm and began firing toward a police vehicle in an alley off Grandview, and then fire at an officer standing on a patch of grass nearby.
Detectives said cell phone footage of the incident provided by the witnesses matched their testimonies.
Morris was arrested by Allegheny County police. In addition to the count of criminal homicide, he is charged with two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer with a firearm, and two counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement official.
A preliminary hearing has not yet been scheduled.
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