Grandmother identifies her son as man who fired gunshots and set house near Philadelphia on fire

CNN

By Danny Freeman, John Miller and Celina Tebor, CNN

(CNN) — A Philadelphia-area grandmother has identified her son as the man who fired gunshots and set their house on fire in East Lansdowne Wednesday.

Chin Le, speaking to CNN affiliate WPVI, identified the shooter as 43-year-old Canh Le.

Le said she heard her son arguing with his 13-year-old niece and saying he was going to get a gun.

At that point, Le and her husband left the house and her husband called 911, she told WPVI.

The Le family lived in the household where the shooting and blaze happened and six members of the family – three adults and three children – were feared dead, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said Thursday.

Le told WPVI her other son, Xuong Le, and his wife, Britni Le, were believed to be dead, along with their children: NaKayla, 13, NaTalya, 17, and Xavier, 10.

Authorities “have reason to believe” a relative who shot at the officers responding to a report a child had been shot at the home is among those unaccounted for, Stollsteimer said in a Wednesday news conference and an interview with CNN affiliate KYW-TV.

The work Thursday was deemed a “recovery effort,” with nobody alive inside the “unstable” home where hot spots still burned, he told reporters. Detectives were methodically going through the crime scene with excavation experts and a drone.

Investigators have recovered a torso and a rifle from the home, the district attorney said Thursday.

The recovery process may take “hours” or even “days,” Stollsteimer said Thursday. “Unfortunately, I’m very confident that we’re going to find at least one body in there, and I think we’re going to find many more, several more.”

“These people’s bodies have been destroyed by fire, so we may have to resort to dental records and other means to try and determine who’s who when we do find more bodies – assuming we do,” Stollsteimer said.

Authorities had been working to nail down “whether or not an 11-year-old girl was or was not shot,” as well as who shot the officers, Stollsteimer said Wednesday. Also among lingering questions is how and when the fire started – and who started it.

A chaotic scene unfolded in and around the home Wednesday as flames swallowed most of the structure, leaving nothing but a charred shell that released massive black smoke plumes, footage from CNN affiliate WPVI shows.

With the fire still raging, an armored vehicle at one point rammed the house, WPVI footage shows.

“I heard a lot of gunshots … and I just (saw) cops running from everywhere,” one neighbor told WPVI, adding they heard authorities yelling about an “active shooter.”

The family had lived in the house for at least five years, a neighbor told CNN.

Responding officers ‘met by gunfire’

Earlier Wednesday, a person had been barricaded in the house, a Delaware County law enforcement source told CNN.

Authorities then got a 911 call just before 3:50 p.m. Wednesday reporting “an 11-year-old girl had been shot” at the home in a borough a few miles west of downtown Philadelphia, Stollsteimer said at the news conference.

Someone claiming to be a child apparently called police and said they had been shot, another source briefed on the situation told CNN, adding it was unclear whether a child had actually been shot.

Officers from three agencies responded and were “immediately met by gunfire,” Stollsteimer said. Two officers were struck and “dragged out of danger” by colleagues, he said.

Officer David Schiazza, 54, of the Lansdowne Police Department, suffered a gunshot wound to his leg, Stollsteimer said. He was released Thursday afternoon from a Philadelphia hospital. Officer John Meehan, 44, of the East Lansdowne Police Department, suffered a gunshot wound to his left arm that required a lengthy surgery, he said. He’s expected to be released later Thursday or Friday.

Both officers are 22-year veterans with their respective departments, he said.

After officers responded, the house was set ablaze, Stollsteimer said. The block was emptied of people and the fire brought mostly under control, though it still remained smoldered Wednesday night, Stollsteimer said at that time.

“There’s nobody else in danger,” he said. “We’re not going to make entry into that house until we know that the fire’s under control and that it’s safe for those officers to go in there … We don’t want another single officer hurt tonight in Delaware County.”

The William Penn School District is providing counselors to support students and staff, it said in a statement.

“This is a time when we need to be there for each other and to provide reassurance for our students, as it is impossible to make sense of what occurred,” the district said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN’s Alisha Ebrahimji, Amy Simonson, Yan Kaner and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.

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