DA: Weapons recovered, investigation into fatal Johnstown shootout progressing

Aug. 25—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Johnstown police have recovered two weapons found in the aftermath of a Wednesday shooting exchange that left two people dead, Cambria County District Attorney Greg Neugebauer said Thursday.

The surviving passengers from two vehicles involved in the incident have been located and interviewed as part of an ongoing criminal investigation that appears to encompass a sprawling crime scene, he told The Tribune-Democrat.

Johnstown police said on Wednesday that their investigation showed that occupants of the two vehicles exchanged gunfire at around 3 p.m. at the corner of Sixth and Broad streets in the city's Cambria City section.

One of the two vehicles crashed into another vehicle parked along Broad Street, and the second vehicle involved in the shootout crashed soon afterward at Dibert and Napoleon streets in the city's Kernville neighborhood.

"The cars are being processed right now," Neugebauer said Thursday of the crime scene evidence.

The Cambria County Coroner's Office had not yet released the identities of either male as of Thursday afternoon. Coroner Jeffrey Lees said that one man died at the scene of the shooting and the second man was pronounced dead at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center.

Investigators plan to release additional information during a press conference on Friday, following the completion of two autopsies to verify the cause and manner of both deaths, Neugebauer said.

Evidence collected during those autopsies at ForensicDx in Windber will be part of a potentially extensive amount of evidence that investigators will have to review, including both vehicles involved in the incident and video from surveillance cameras across the community, he said.

'It's a shame'

The incident rattled operators of businesses in the usually quiet Cambria City neighborhood, as well as a city that has seen a resurgence in shootings in 2022.

Timothy Layton, director of Francis G. Ozog Funeral Home on Broad Street, said he was unaware of the incident on Wednesday until he went to the funeral home's front door to greet a family and saw a line of emergency vehicles nearby.

He said he has spoken with authorities and was making a copy of surveillance footage from the funeral home's front lobby to hand over to police.

"It's a shame something like this is happening in Johnstown," Layton said. "You never want to see this."

Richard Burkert, CEO of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, said the Heritage Discovery Center at Sixth and Broad streets closed its doors early after police arrived at the scene of the shooting. It turned the entire corridor surrounding the history center into a crime scene, compelling staff to direct visitors to exit the parking lot through an adjacent property that was further from the incident, he said.

"Cambria City is a quiet neighborhood," Burkert said. "These days, there aren't even that many people living here anymore."

He said he couldn't recall a previous shooting in the neighborhood.

"But anytime you have people shooting at each other somewhere on a public street," Burkert said, "it's shocking."

Prior to Wednesday, seven people have been slain in six shootings in Cambria County since January 1. Each of those six occurred in Johnstown.

Four of them involved shootings that claimed five lives in the city's Hornerstown neighborhood — the most recent a late April incident that claimed the lives of a man and a woman who were "likely targeted" inside a Pine Street apartment, according to police.

Police have urged the public to step forward with information that could help them solve the cases by contacting law enforcement at 814-472-2100 or by texting to the anonymous tip line, JPD Tip411.