1-year-old killed amid night of violence in Pittsburgh

A bullet meant for someone else found its way through a window and two walls at an apartment complex in Spring Hill, killing a 1-year-old boy as he slept in his bed Monday night.

Pittsburgh police on Tuesday morning pleaded for anyone with information about the shootout that killed Zykier Young to come forward.

“This is senseless. It shouldn’t happen. A child laying in their bed, shot by people who are intent on committing violence in our city is unacceptable,” said Chief Scott Schubert, pledging that his bureau will find and hold accountable those involved in the shootout. “We owe it to that baby, we owe it to their family and we owe it to that community.

“This has got to end,” he said.

The shooting started just after 6 p.m. on Rhine Place, and multiple people with multiple firearms were involved, said Cmdr. Vic Joseph, leader of the bureau’s major crimes unit. ShotSpotter, the city’s gunshot detection technology, and multiple 911 calls alerted police to the shooting.

Joseph wouldn’t say how many shooters investigators believe were involved, saying only there were several and that police collected ballistics evidence from the scene.

“A round – a stray round – traveled a great distance through a window, went through two walls, and it struck a sleeping baby in his bed in his home,” Joseph said.

Three officers drove the boy to the hospital in a police cruiser, with one driving and two in the backseat working to control the bleeding, Joseph said. He was pronounced dead around 8 p.m.

The deadly shooting prompted Mayor Bill Peduto to speak out on Twitter, calling for an end to “senseless gun violence.

“Another innocent life has been stolen,” he wrote.

The shooting was the 10th in a week in Pittsburgh, and the fifth shooting that ended in homicide, said Assistant Chief Lavonie Bickerstaff.

Zykier was the second child killed in the past week. Tanner J. Morton, 16, was shot and killed Wednesday in Mt. Washington.

Two men were killed over the weekend in the city: Kenneth A. Wilson, 56, died after a shooting Sunday in Northview Heights, and 21-year-old James w. Goodwine was shot and killed the same day in the Hill District.

On Monday, 19-year-old Michael William Arnold died at the hospital not long after he was shot in Upper Lawrenceville.

No arrests have been made in any of the killings, police said.

Five other non-fatal shootings have occurred on city streets in the past week. Two of them happened in the hours after Zykier was killed.

About 2 a.m., the city’s Zone 3 police responded to a man with a graze wound from a shooting on Brownsville Road in Carrick. The man was transported to the hospital in stable condition.

About an hour later, police in the Hill District responded around 3 a.m. to a ShotSpotter alert near Dinwiddie Street. First responders found a man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, authorities said. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

No arrests have been made in either incident.