Residents return to their homes following Garfield standoff
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A day later, after an hours-long shootout in Pittsburgh's Garfield neighborhood, residents are back.
A lot of questions remain unanswered after a six-hour standoff on Thursday. The suspect's home is now boarded up. Other homes are also damaged by gunfire.
"He was telling me that they're gonna pay for this, and I'm like, 'Who? Everyone on this street is cool.' He said, 'You'll see,'" Cecil Barry said, describing the beginning of an ominous conversation he had with William Hardison.
Cheryl Patterson thought she noticed odd things, too.
"I seen him bring a rifle bag, and it had to be more than one rifle," she said.
But no one expected this terror in Pittsburgh's Garfield neighborhood.
At a news conference, city officials and police said they did everything they could to try to get Hardison to surrender peacefully.
"The exchange of gunfire, there was thousands of gunfire," Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Chief Larry Scirotto said. "The tactical team exhausted every resource available from communication to playing family messages to less lethal force options then, ultimately, deadly force."
Police say they tried to serve an eviction notice. Hardison didn't respond well, and the father, grandfather, and veteran started firing at officers trying to talk to him. He shot down several police drones.
Residents were evacuated.
He barricaded himself inside the home. That home, KDKA is told, belonged to Hardison's brother, who died. A man named William Hardison was also listed on the deed, but the home sold in February at a sheriff's sale.
There was speculation that Hardison tried to talk to Mayor Ed Gainey about staying in his family home.
Mayor Gainey said he knew the family, but that conversation never happened.
"I do know members of his family. I do not know him. I have spoken to the family today. The ones I know, I have offered my condolences."
Sources were aware that Hardison considered himself a sovereign citizen not bound by the laws of the United States or any state or local government.
Back on Broad Street, bullet-riddled cars and homes remain, but miraculously, no one was hurt.
Mayor Gainey, Chief Scirotto, and social workers came to the neighborhood to comfort residents and let them know homes or property damage would be covered.
Still, there's a lot of healing for Leslie Thompson, who was rescued by SWAT and has these reminders.
"I still have a lot of anxiety. Still just trying to process," Thompson said.
Seventy-five police officers are on administrative leave for firing their weapons; 47 from Pittsburgh police, 16 sheriff deputies, and 12 from Allegheny County Police.
The FOP president tells KDKA those officers will go through drug screenings, turn over their weapons to verify which were fired, and officers will be evaluated by a psychologist and be interviewed by members of the Pennsylvania State Police, all of which could take three to four days.
