'It looked like an absolute warzone'; Neighbor reacts to six-hour deadly standoff, shootout in Garfield
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Many people in Pittsburgh's Garfield community are recovering this morning following the deadly standoff along Broad Street on Wednesday afternoon.
Police converged on the area of Broad and North Mathilda Street around 11 a.m. after shots rang out while Allegheny County Sheriff's deputies were at a home to serve an eviction notice to the suspect, later identified as William Hardison, Sr.
Allegheny County Sheriff Kevin Kraus said the gunman was shooting out of the first- and second-floor windows and through the wall. Deputies returned fire and "engaged in a pretty significant gun battle," Kraus said. He said there was a "lengthy" gun battle before SWAT officers arrived and stabilized the scene.
The standoff and shootout lasted around six hours, with Hardison pronounced dead inside the home just after 5 p.m.
As of Thursday morning, many people who live near where the shootout took place are not allowed back inside their homes.
KDKA spoke exclusively with the next-door neighbor of the shooter and said that his home now looks like a warzone.
Thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired at police and Martin Nichols, who lives next-door to where the shootout occurred, says that Hardison was a menace who was squatting on the property and was terrible to neighbors in the area.
Nichols says that Hardison would throw garbage in neighbors' yards and even stole water out of their hoses, but never expected that the situation would end the way that it did.
PHOTO GALLERY: Law enforcement converge in Garfield as 'active shooting situation' unfolds
"We did know that he was going to have some trouble getting out but never expected him to have a whole gunfight with the neighborhood and endanger the lives of so many people," Nichols said.
Nichols is now picking up the pieces.
He was allowed back into his home briefly to pick up some belongings before police continued their investigation.
"There were holes all through my walls," Nichols said. "There was dust literally everywhere. It didn't even look like a home at that point. The front of my house was overall okay. I will say that the inside, as soon as you walk through the front, it looked like an absolute warzone."
Once police complete their investigation, the house will need cleaned and again made habitable.
Nichols is now staying with a co-worker, but being asthmatic and with the amount of dust left from the shot-up walls, he doesn't know if he will ever be able to live in that home again.
