Son fatally shot hours later; detectives vexed by timing and evidence
The Pittsburgh Police Department chief whose son confessed to a spree of murders last summer was wounded in an ambush-style shooting Thursday night, hours before his other son was fatally shot the same way.
Ben Kern, the department’s assistant chief of operations, was shot once about 8 p.m. before someone intervened and the shooter fled, according to police sources. Hours later, with police still canvassing the scene where Kern was shot, his son Michael was shot four times and pronounced dead at West Penn Hospital.
The brazen attacks mark the latest turns in a months-long saga and tangled investigation into last summer’s “Accountability murders” and the Kern family’s connection to the shootings. Chief Albert Mixon and other police brass were tight-lipped at a press conference early Friday morning outside West Penn.
“Look, we all know about what’s been in the news, what with respect to, Mr. Kern’s son and the alleged transgressions, whatever happened there,” Mixon said. “Our detectives are working around the clock to solve these shootings and we’re praying for Chief Kern and his family and ask they be afforded some privacy during their time of grief.”
Ben’s other son, Aaron, was arrested in the fall in connection with a series of high-profile murders of men whose alleged wrongdoing was exposed by a digital activist under the moniker NO/ONE who acquired damning and often confidential documents and released them online.
Mixon and other officials wouldn’t speculate on motive in either of Thursday night’s shootings, but asked media to respect the family’s privacy. Mixon and Kern have a long history together and served in many of the same assignments as each climbed the ranks of the police department to the positions they hold today.
It’s not clear who intervened when Kern was shot, and police officials have only said an “unidentified passer-by” saw someone carrying a gun approach Kern and that a “struggle ensued” before Kern was shot. He was shot once, though witnesses told police they heard between two and four shots.
Michael was walking outside about 11 p.m. fired at least four shots toward him from inside a passing car, police said. Police said they were unable to locate witnesses in that shooting.
Police sources told the Pittsburgh Ledger that investigators are vexed by multiple aspects of the attacks. The shootings last night are being investigated as if they’re related, though detectives haven’t linked the shootings through ballistics evidence because no casings were recovered at the first scene. Once detectives realized the chief’s son had been shot hours later, they rushed processing of the shell casings.
And it’s still unclear whether the hacktivist NO/ONE played any role or motivated the shooter in anyway – the earlier shootings and murders having occurred after NO/ONE doxed the victims. The chief’s son, Aaron, is in custody in connection with two murders and three non-fatal shootings.
The most confusing, and troubling aspect of the early investigation so far, sources said: the shell casings from last night’s murder appear to have been fired by the gun used in last summer’s accountability murders and a separate “copycat” murder two nights ago. Aaron was arrested in the Carrie Blast Furnaces and is awaiting trial on last summer’s shootings – but the copycat murder two nights ago happened while Aaron was in custody.
“Just an absolute cluster,” one source told the Ledger. “Don’t know how else to say it. Nobody knows what’s what.”
Mixon wouldn’t comment on the shell casings from each scene having been fired from the same weapon, or say whether detectives were able to find surveillance footage or other evidence from either shooting.
“Suffice it to say, we’re in the very early stages of our investigation,” he said. “And we’re not at liberty to really go into details there.”
Elected officials across the city and state released statements as news of Kern’s shooting spread, and Mayor Eric Hauser visited Kern in the hospital late Thursday. He didn’t speak at the overnight press conference.