Families: Car Wash Mass Shooter Was Driven by Jealousy

Tim Smith is not expected to survive
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jan 29, 2018 3:21 AM CST
Families: Car Wash Mass Shooter Was Driven by Jealousy
A little girl watches from the front of a market as trucks remove three vehicles from a scene where a shooter killed four people Sunday outside Ed's Carwash in Saltlick Township, Pa.   (Stephanie Strasburg/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)

A man suspected of gunning down four people at a Pennsylvania car wash was driven by jealousy, according to family members of the shooting victims. State police say Timothy Smith, 28, was armed with a semi-automatic rifle, a .308-caliber rifle, and a handgun and was wearing body armor without the ballistic panels inserted when he opened fire early Sunday morning at Ed's Car Wash in Saltlick Township, a rural town about 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, the AP reports. Twenty-seven-year-old William Porterfield, 25-year-old Chelsie Cline, 23-year-old Courtney Snyder, and 21-year-old Seth Cline were all killed. Smith was on life support Sunday and not expected to survive after suffering a gunshot wound to his head. State police say it might have been self-inflicted.

A woman who took cover in Snyder's pickup when Smith opened fire survived with minor injuries from broken glass. Chelsie Cline's half-sister, Sierra Kolarik, tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that Smith had developed an obsession with Cline. Porterfield's pregnant wife, Jenna Porterfield, 24, tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that a state police investigator told her that Smith was a jealous former boyfriend of Cline. Porterfield says she was told by family members of other victims that her husband and Cline had spent the past two days together after Cline ended a relationship with Smith. Porterfield says she and her husband—who were married in November—had been "having some troubles" this month, but she doesn't hold it against him. "I'd give anything to have him back," she says.

(More Pennsylvania stories.)

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