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The suspected shooter was believed to have set fire to the home
and was among those still inside, Delaware County District
Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said. News video showed flames and
smoke billowing out of the two-story, wood-frame home.
The fire was burning too intensely to enter, so officials said
they would wait until Thursday to search for victims,
Stollsteimer told reporters.
"I will say with a heavy heart that we are afraid there might be
more than one person in that in that house. We know the victim's
family had a lot of people living in that house including
children. We're aware that there were at least six to eight
people who are unaccounted for from that family," Stollsteimer
said.
Officers responded to the home in East Lansdowne, a suburb just
west of Philadelphia, after receiving a call that an 11-year-old
girl had been shot.
They came under fire immediately, Stollsteimer said, adding that
the officers appeared to be "doing well" when he and other
senior officials visited them in the hospital.
"They gave us the thumbs up. Those guys are going to be OK,"
said Stollsteimer, the chief prosecutor for the county, which
has a population of about 575,000.
He declined to take questions from reporters until after the
search on Thursday morning.
"It could be a lot of bad news tomorrow," Stollsteimer said.
"We're hopeful that we are wrong, but because these family
members are unaccounted for, we are concerned that they may have
been inside the home that was set on fire."
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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