Four people were killed early on Sunday morning at a car wash in Pennsylvania in the deadliest shooting in the US this year. One person was injured and the gunman was on life support with a gunshot wound to the head, officials said.

Officials said they had not yet established a motive. But local news channels reported that the shooting, in which two men and two women died, was linked to domestic violence.

The gunman, Timothy O’Brien Smith, 28, was wearing body armor and was armed with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, a 9mm handgun and a .308 rifle, Richard Bower, Fayette County district attorney, said at an afternoon press conference.

The four victims were apparently shot and killed with both the AR-15-style rifle and the handgun, Bower said.

Initial reports said five people were dead and one injured. Bower said four were dead and one, the gunman, was “not expected to survive”. It was not immediately determined if his head wound was self-inflicted.

The four people killed were named as William Scott Porterfield, 27; Chelsie Lou Cline, 25; Seth Cline, 21; and Courtney Sue Snyder, 23.

A woman in her early 20s survived by hiding in a truck and sustained only minor injuries from breaking glass, officials said. She was cooperating with the investigation.

The incident was the 21st and deadliest high-casualty shooting in the US since the turn of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.



Bower said a motive and the relationship between the gunman and the victims had not been established. But the sister of one of the women who was killed told WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh the gunman was her sister’s ex-boyfriend, who was upset she had broken up with him.

Another local station, WPXI, reported that the gunman had dated one of the victims.

A state trooper said two victims were found inside a pickup truck and two others were found in the parking lot.



Three vehicles were towed from the location. Two were pickup trucks – including the one two of the victims were found in. The other was a sedan.

Mass shootings in the US frequently have a link to domestic violence. The gunman who attacked a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in November, killing 26 people, had a criminal record of domestic abuse. The shooting, in which his wife’s grandmother was among those killed, was a “domestic situation”, officials said.

In Plano, Texas in September, an estranged husband opened fire on a football-watching party at his wife’s home, killing his wife and seven others before he was shot by police, officials said.

According to a 2017 report from Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, an analysis of mass shootings between 2009 and 2016 found that 54% were related to domestic or family violence.

A New York Times analysis of 358 mass shootings across America in 2015, using a lower numeric cutoff for what counted as a mass shooting, found that only about one in 10 of high-casualty shootings were related to domestic violence.

But domestic violence incidents were also much more likely to be fatal, that analysis found, with domestic violence cases representing 11% of total incidents but 31% of victims who died.

The victims and perpetrators in these shootings were overwhelmingly white.

The shooting at Ed’s Car Wash occurred shortly before 3am in the Melcroft community of Saltlick Township, about 55 miles south-east of Pittsburgh.

Fayette County, Pennsylvania, where Melcroft is located, is 93% white. In 2016, 64% of voters there supported Donald Trump, who campaigned on fierce opposition to gun control laws.