Gunman kills woman at Pa. church, 2 men elsewhere

Three troopers in patrol cars were injured in a pursuit that began after the gunman, driving a pick-up truck, fired at them, police said. One trooper injured a wrist and then was hit in the chest but was saved by a bulletproof vest.

The gunman was killed during a final exchange of gunfire after ramming his truck head-on into another police cruiser, authorities said.

The shootings began in Frankstown Township, in central Pennsylvania, at about 9 a.m., and investigators were processing five crime scenes within about a 1.5-mile radius, authorities said at a news briefing Friday afternoon. Troopers were responding to a 911 call of a shooting in the township when they heard calls reporting at least one other shooting elsewhere, state police said.

"It's going to take us some time to put this all together ... and know exactly what occurred," said Lt. Col. George Bivens, deputy state police commissioner.

Authorities did not release the names of the victims or the shooter, though they did say the man lived in Blair County.

State police said they were still trying to piece together a timeline and motive. The gunman and the victims weren't related, though the victims may have been, at least distantly, Blair County District Attorney Rich Consiglio said.

Besides the woman, Bivens said, one man was shot at a residence, and the other man was shot at a crash site where the gunman "used his truck and also struck that vehicle much in the same manner that he did to our state police officer."

But family members of the victims said they were told the woman at the church was the first victim shot, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. The gunman then shot two men in the driveway of a home after a confrontation at a stop sign, one of the men's cousins, Marie Brenneman, told the newspaper.

"This person went to their driveway with a pistol, pointed at them and started shooting," Brenneman said.

She said both men were the shooter's neighbors in the tiny village of Geeseytown, about 70 miles west of Harrisburg, the state capital.

"They were uneasy around him," she said.

The woman at Juniata Valley Gospel Church had cooked food the day before for the funeral of the church's longtime pastor, said the Rev. James McCaulley, his brother. The church was still reeling from the Rev. David McCaulley's death when the woman returned to decorate its hall — named after the pastor of 58 years — and bullets ripped through a window, he said.