A 61-year-old man shot and killed his neighbor in rural Pennsylvania Thursday and then ambushed first responders, wounding two state troopers and causing an EMT to crash a vehicle while firing dozens of rounds from a semiautomatic weapon, police said. The attacker was later killed by police.
The boyfriend of the woman who was killed, Lori Wasko, called 911 from their home near Thompson to report that shots had been fired, state police Col. Christopher Paris said. Police did not say why the suspect, identified as Carmine Faino, decided to kill 57-year-old Wasko outside her home and then open fire on the others.
Police said after shooting troopers Joseph Perechinsky and William Jenkins, Faino shot a police drone from the sky while sitting next to a propane tank they feared could be used as a bomb.
Perechinsky, with two chest wounds, commandeered a tractor-trailer that was driving by to block the roadway and prevent other motorists from driving into harm’s way.
He ordered the driver to “pull his semi rig across the roadway so that more people would not drive down that roadway and potentially be subjected to the fire,” Paris said.