The number of confirmed shots-fired calls in 2020 jumped more than 80% over 2019 s figures.
Erie police officers took 136 stolen firearms reports in 2020. They took 76 in 2018 and 79 in 2019.
There were eight people fatally shot in the City of Erie in 2020.
Erie was already in the midst of another spike in gun violence when a 13-year-old boy was shot multiple times while walking home from a relative s house on the evening of Dec. 5.
That shooting, which claimed the life of Kasir Gambill 10 days later, compounded the problem, according to Erie Police Chief Dan Spizarny.
Following a year in which Erie experienced significant increases in the number of reported shootings, the number of people shot and the number of people killed by gunfire, 2021 has started in a similarly dangerous fashion in the city.
Erie Police Chief Dan Spizarny said Friday that investigators suspect that at least some incidents in a recent spate of gun violence in the city might stem from the fatal shooting of a 13-year-old boy in early December.
Those incidents could include reports from two teenage boys who said they were shot at by unknown suspects as they walked in neighborhoods on the city s east side on Thursday night.
Neither teen was injured in the two shootings, which were reported about an hour apart.
Erie police had no suspects in either crime Friday. Authorities said they are investigating whether the teens were targeted in the incidents.
Pennsylvania State Police investigators are still trying to understand why a North East man who met up with a friend at a Greene Township gun range to test a new pistol on Tuesday afternoon turned the weapon on his friend and fired it repeatedly before a bystander fatally shot him. At this point, we are continuing to investigate the back story, the relationship between these two individuals, to determine why the shooting occurred, Lt. Mark Weindorf, crime section supervisor for state police Troop E, said Thursday morning.
Weindorf referenced the relationship between 26-year-old Robert A. Eppley, who died after being shot by the bystander; and a 28-year-old Erie man, whom Eppley is accused of shooting multiple times. Authorities have not released the name of the 28-year-old or the bystander.