A pregnant Erie, Pennsylvania mother days from giving birth was among eight people killed Friday evening in a shooting that police believe ended as a murder-suicide carried out by her own father.
Angelina Stone, who had publicly posted that her due date was October 14, died along with her two young children — 5-year-old son Isiah and daughter Amari’anna — and her unborn child, whom the family had named Kyrie. Several other relatives were also killed before the gunman turned the weapon on himself.
Police have not officially released the identity of the 45-year-old shooter, but family members say it was Stone’s father who opened fire inside a home on the 700 block of Perry Road on Erie’s East Side at roughly 4:53 p.m. Friday.
“Angelina’s father killed Angelina and her children in a murder-suicide, and now our family is facing the painful task of laying them to rest,” Aaliyah Williams, the aunt of Stone’s daughter, wrote in a GoFundMe set up for the family.
Erie police were alerted to the shooting through the city’s ShotSpotter detection system. Officers arriving at the scene found two women, ages 37 and 51, shot in the street outside the home. The gunman then barricaded himself inside, triggering a standoff while police obtained a search warrant to enter.
“It was horrific. It was the worst scene I have ever experienced,” Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said at a press conference following the shooting.
When officers finally entered the home, they found Isiah, Amari’anna, and a 10-month-old girl dead on the first floor. Upstairs, Stone’s body was found alongside a 44-year-old woman and two men, ages 19 and 21. The gunman died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Eight of the nine people killed were related to one another. The ninth was identified as a family friend.
Lorah told reporters he believes “mental health is at play here” but said investigators have not established a motive for the killings.
Family remembers the victims
Family friend Lisa Simmers described Stone and her children to Erie News Now, saying Stone “was pregnant, about to have her baby in a couple days and she had a daughter that was almost 2 and her son Isiah and they were all just beautiful.”
Simmers told CBS Pittsburgh that both of Stone’s children were on the autism spectrum.
“Her two babies were on the spectrum. Innocent children, couldn’t have told on that man if they wanted to, and he still killed them,” Simmers said. “A crime like that, what do you say? A person kills two innocent children, a pregnant woman and the people coming to try to help her.”
Simmers said she and others were standing outside the home while the shooting unfolded inside. “It’s mind-blowing to me to understand what was happening in that house while we were standing outside. The feeling of helplessness and knowing we couldn’t do anything and she was right there,” she said.
Amari’anna’s father, Juicesiyah Alexander Ezekiel, spoke to Erie News Now about losing his daughter.
“It was my baby, bro, and he just took her,” Ezekiel said. “Her name was Amari’anna. She’s the most beautiful baby God could have created.”
Ezekiel said he had struggled with depression after surviving a homicide in Erie in 2022, which led him to move away from the city. “I left Erie to stay away from that lifestyle, and I come back and lose my daughter, lose my baby mom, lose who I was fighting to stay alive for,” he said. “I wouldn’t even put this on my worst enemy. It’s sickening.”
