BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. — An armed man strolled to the back of an exercise class at a health club in suburban Pittsburgh tonight and then pulled out two guns and started spraying bullets, leaving four people dead, including himself, and injuring at least 10 others, police and a hospital said.
“He did not say anything,” Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said. “He walked right into the room where the shootings occurred as if he knew exactly where he was going.”
The shooting was at the L.A. Fitness Center in Bridgeville, a community of about 5,000 residents not far from downtown Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh International Airport.
After a burst of bullets, people began screaming and running out of the building, a witness said.
Debi Wozniak, of Dormont, a suburb of Pittsburgh, is a regular at the weekly Latin impact dance exercise class. She was running late tonight and didn’t make it, but she said her sister, Joann Gazzam, was in the class.
Gazzam told Wozniak that a man came in through the glass double doors at the exercise room’s entrance. He walked to the back of the room near some weights and set down a bag, fumbled with it for a few minutes and came up with what Gazzam said were apparently two guns and began shooting.
Gazzam told Wozniak that several people appeared to be wounded, including the instructor, and that it was apparent that four people were dead and that the gunman had killed himself.
“She told me, ‘Debi, I seen everything. Oh, my God, I seen everything. I seen him pull out the guns,”’ Wozniak said.
Moffatt said police recovered two guns from the scene. He would not discuss a possible motive for the shooting, whose victims hadn’t been identified.
“As you can imagine in a fitness club, they don’t have identification on them,” he said.
Loretta Moss, 44, of McDonald said she was exercising on a treadmill when she heard a popping noise.
“I didn’t pay any attention, and the next minute, people were screaming,” said Moss, who had come to the gym for the first time in a couple of weeks. She said she then heard more pops.
“There was a like a whole spray of them. I’d say about 15 altogether, and then people started screaming and yelling and started running out the building,” she said.
“We laid down, and then after the last set of … gunshots, we got up, and someone said run.”
Moss said she then saw two young women bleeding, one in the leg and one shot in the shoulder. She said she checked on the pulse of the lady shot in the leg
“She was screaming, ‘It’s burning, just please call the ambulance,”’ Moss said.
Brad Bolt of Dormont and Phil Fagan of Green Tree, both 20, were working out in a room next to the room where the shooting happened. They both said they heard about a dozen rapidly fired shots and Fagan said a girl came running out of the exercise room, yelling “’Shots fired, call 911, get out.”’
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