A procession of police filed onto Brownsville Road Tuesday afternoon, bringing the normally busy stretch through Brentwood to a standstill as they escorted fallen McKeesport officer Sean Sluganski back home.
Businesses emptied as McDonald’s customers stepped outside to see dozens of first responders from across the region pay their respects. Employees wearing aprons reading Great Clips and those in UPMC scrubs filled the streets.
Police officers gathered together and family members consoled each other as Officer Sluganski’s body was brought from the county medical examiner’s office to John F. Slater Funeral Home, not far from where he grew up in Baldwin Borough.
“It’s a shameful thing,” said Angelo Isoldi, who watched as the procession snaked its way through the borough. “It’s got to stop.”
Officer Sluganski was gunned down Monday during a call for an altercation between a mother and her son, who she said was suffering from a mental health crisis.
A second officer, Charles Thomas Jr., was wounded in the shooting.
Officer Sluganski, 32, had a 1-year-old daughter and was engaged to be married. He’d served on the McKeesport force since January 2020. Before that, he worked in Charleroi and Whitaker.
Officer Thomas, 35, has worked for McKeesport for four years. He was shot in the face and neck, and he was released from the hospital Monday night.
Johnathan Morris, 31, is charged with homicide in connection with the shooting. He remained hospitalized with at least one gunshot wound Tuesday afternoon.
Gov. Josh Shapiro called for all state and U.S. flags to fly at half-staff until Officer Sluganski’s burial, though funeral arrangements had not been announced as of Tuesday afternoon.
Acting Attorney General Michelle Henry released a statement calling it “a tragic day.”
“While the investigation into this incident is still in the very early stages and ongoing,” she said, “early reporting underscores the challenges and volatility we ask police to confront.”
The deadly series of events began with a mental health call.
Mr. Morris’ mother, Candace Tyler, called McKeesport police just after 12:10 p.m. to report he was acting aggressively toward her, according to arrest records. She told dispatchers that he was a military veteran and he was having a post-traumatic stress disorder episode.
The dispatcher told officers that Ms. Tyler reported there were weapons in the house but said none were involved in the altercation she was having with her son.
“There are guns but they are secure, per the caller on this,” the dispatcher relayed to Officers Sluganski and Thomas.
Officer Sluganski arrived at the two-story red brick home on Wilson Street first, about 12:14 p.m., according to investigators. Officer Thomas turned onto the brick street and pulled up to the home with a large bay window about two minutes later.
By then, Mr. Morris had walked away.
Officer Sluganski spotted Mr. Morris again around 12:21 p.m. near Craig Street, according to the affidavit.
One of the officers — it’s unclear from police radio recordings which one — asked the other if Ms. Tyler had said whether her son had a gun on him.
“He’s got his hands in his pockets,” the officer said.
“No, she said they’re all in the house,” came the reply.
The officers and dispatcher sound calm. The dispatcher asks one of the officers if he’s “out with that male,” and the officer replies that he’s “trying to be,” but Mr. Morris keeps running.
Four minutes later, Officer Sluganski noted Mr. Morris’ hands again.
“Watch that right hand, that pocket’s real heavy,” he said.
Officer Thomas notes that Mr. Morris seems “out of his mind,” and radios that “this dude’s on the hood of my car.”
Within a minute or two, both officers had been shot, with Officer Thomas pleading for help over his radio.
The criminal complaint filed against Mr. Morris fills in some of the gaps amidst the radio calls.
Two witnesses said they were driving on Grandview Avenue when Mr. Morris flagged them down, telling them “police were trying to kill him,” asking that they film him. The witnesses told investigators they obliged and followed Mr. Morris in their car down Grandview Avenue toward Versailles Avenue.
The witnesses said Mr. Morris went into the front yard of 1300 Grandview Ave., a three-story home with pale yellow siding and a covered front porch. The witness said then a black police cruiser pulled just past Mr. Morris in DeLong Alley, the narrow alleyway adjacent to 1300 Grandview.
The criminal complaint and police radio calls indicate that it was Officer Thomas who pulled up alongside Mr. Morris. Witnesses said another officer, now known to be Officer Sluganski, approached Mr. Morris on foot.
The witnesses said Mr. Morris pulled a handgun out of his clothing with his right hand, pointed it toward the police cruiser and opened fire, according to the complaint. One witness said Mr. Morris then turned toward Officer Sluganski and fired at him. The witness who had been recording the events as they unfolded turned that footage over to investigators.
Detectives said gunshot evidence lined up with the witness interviews, indicating that Mr. Morris fired through Officer Thomas’ windshield as he was parked on DeLong Alley.
Officer Thomas, shot in the face and neck, managed to return fire, catching Mr. Morris in the leg. He’d later tell detectives that Mr. Morris wouldn’t stop for them, and he caught up with him in the alley near Grandview. As he did, he said, he heard and felt gunshots.
From there, according to the complaint, Mr. Morris ran across the street toward a Unimart parking lot where he ran into two other witnesses.
Those witnesses said Mr. Morris approached and said he had been shot. One witness said they started applying a tourniquet, at which point they saw Mr. Morris pull out a handgun and point it toward an approaching McKeesport police officer.
That McKeesport officer, who investigators did not identify in the complaint, said he heard Officers Sluganski and Thomas respond to the original 911 call followed by the calls for an officer down, according to the complaint.
As he got to the scene, he said, he saw Mr. Morris being tended to by the witnesses. Mr. Morris told the officer he’d been shot and then pointed across the street toward DeLong Alley. As the officer turned to look, he said, Mr. Morris pulled out a handgun and fired one round at the officer.
The officer returned fire toward Mr. Morris, “who was now rolling across Patterson Avenue toward Versailles Avenue,” investigators wrote. He was ultimately taken into custody, and officers found the handgun he’d dropped as he rolled.
It wasn’t until shortly after 1 p.m. that the dispatcher realized two officers had been shot.
She called for Officer Sluganski’s unit number twice: “Eleven-sixteen, county.” A pause. “Eleven-sixteen, county.”
Someone asks for medics. Someone else says to make way for an ambulance on Versailles.
The dispatcher asks the chief: “Can you confirm there’s only one officer down?”
“We have two officers down,” he responds.
By then, Officer Sluganski had already been pronounced dead at 12:58 p.m. just a mile or so away at UPMC McKeesport.
McKeesport reaction
Robin Lacey was at work Monday afternoon when she received an alert that her Ring doorbell detected movement outside her Grandview Avenue home.
The doorbell caught 20 seconds of the interaction between the two officers and Mr. Morris. The video, which was turned over to police, ended with an officer being shot.
“It’s just a shame that something like this had to happen that could have ... with proper mental health care,” Ms. Lacey said Tuesday. “Maybe the gentleman might not have had an episode and taken someone’s life.”
A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said he was in the bathroom when he heard commotion outside his Grandview Avenue home. He yelled to his elderly parents to get on the floor when he heard a number of gunshots fired outside the window.
“I yelled for my parents to get down,” the man said. “They’re elderly, they can’t even hear. They didn’t even know there were shots. I yelled for them to get on the floor because it sounded so close.”
After police officers began arriving on scene, the man stepped outside. One officer was being loaded into an ambulance. The second was being tended by medics.
By Tuesday, a brown teddy bear sat along Grandview near St. Mary’s Cemetery. A card reading “The McKeesport Police Family” was placed in its lap. Throughout the city, flags were at half-staff. Three yellow roses were placed between “We support our police” signs in front of the police department.
“It’s a shame it was a young man who didn’t deserve to die,” Ms. Lacey said. “It’s very heartbreaking for him, his family, his young daughter. It’s unfortunate. It was very scary that it happened right there.”
First Published: February 7, 2023, 5:40 p.m.
Updated: February 8, 2023, 11:22 a.m.
