(NEW YORK) — Six family members remain unaccounted for a day after a massive house fire engulfed a Pennsylvania residence where officers responding to an emergency call were met with gunfire, officials said.
Authorities presume that three adults and three children who lived in the house were inside during the shooting and subsequent fire and are dead, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday.
The remains of a human torso and a rifle have so far been recovered from the house, which has been largely burned out, Stollsteimer said.
“There’s a lot more work to be done,” he said, adding that a timeline on the recovery effort is unclear as the scene is “very unsafe.”
While responding to the home Wednesday afternoon, officers were “immediately met by gunfire,” Stollsteimer told reporters during a press briefing Wednesday. Two officers were shot, he said.
The two male officers, who were with the East Lansdowne and Lansdowne police departments, each sustained a single gunshot wound, Stollsteimer said. They were pulled from the scene to safety by responding officers from the Upper Darby Police Department, he said.
The injured officers are in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries, according to Stollsteimer. One officer is expected to be released from the hospital Thursday afternoon, he said. The second suffered a “slightly more serious wound” and remains hospitalized, he said.
During the incident, the house became engulfed in flames while shots were still being fired from the home, Stollsteimer said. It is unclear how the fire started.
A 911 caller reported that an 11-year-old girl had been shot at the residence in East Lansdowne, according to Stollsteimer. It is unclear if an 11-year-old had been shot, he said.
Stollsteimer said he believes a family member who was not in the home may have called 911, but it is unclear if that was the 911 that “triggered the response.”
A neighbor, John White, told reporters at the scene he heard gunfire and sometime later, “13 or 15 more shots.” He said he “got low” during the incident, and SWAT members later evacuated him from his home.
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