Suspect in Bucks County shootings that killed family members is captured several hours later in Trenton

The man in the black skull cap and what looked like a gas mask banged on the window of her silver Nissan on a street in Trenton about 8:40 a.m. Saturday. When he pulled out a gun, said 67-year-old Sonya Hanson, whose 9-year-old grandson was in the car, “I was shaking.

“I thought he was going to kill me.”

After Hanson, a hospital worker who lives in Trenton, and her grandson managed to scramble to safety, the man sped away in the Nissan, and according to police, what followed was a daylong drama that left three people shot to death in Falls Township, Bucks County and ended in an hours-long, tension-filled scene back in Trenton.

The suspect, identified as Andre Gordon, 26, finally surrendered to police around 5:15 p.m.

Police said that Gordon shot and killed two relatives at a residence on Viewpoint Lane shortly before 9 a.m., and that Gordon then drove to nearby Edgewood Lane, where he allegedly fatally shot a woman with whom he had two children.

Then, officials said, he carjacked another vehicle and fled to a house on Phillips Avenue in Trenton in what authorities initially thought was a barricade situation that had him holding four people hostage inside. However, police later said that he had been able to escape before SWAT officers surrounded the house.

It was at least the third violent crime involving the slaying of family members in the Philadelphia suburbs in the last two months.

Bucks County District Attorney Jen Schorn and Falls Township Police Chief Nelson Whitney said at a briefing that Gordon, armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, forced his way into a home on Viewpoint Lane, where he shot and killed his stepmother, Karen Gordon, 52, and his 13-year-old sister, Kera Gordon.

Three other family members, including a minor, hid from Gordon as he opened fire. They were able to “avoid being shot by Gordon as he went through the house searching for them,” Schorn said. Minutes later, Gordon forced his way into another house, on nearby Edgewood Lane. There, he opened fire, killing Taylor Daniel, 25, according to Schorn.

Four other people — including the two children Gordon had with Daniel and Daniel’s mother — also were inside. Gordon bludgeoned Taylor’s mother, who was not identified, with the assault rifle, Schorn said.

She was being treated at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital and expected to survive. Gordon fled and carjacked a Honda CRV from a 44-year-old man at a nearby Dollar General Store on Bristol Pike. The man was not injured.

Within hours, police discovered the second stolen car abandoned on a residential street in Trenton, and police received information that Gordon had barricaded himself inside a home with hostages. Schorn would not say how many people were in the Trenton house with Gordon.

As it turned out, however, at some point he managed to elude a SWAT team and get out of the residence. He eventually was arrested when police were alerted that he was seen on the street.

Schorn said that Gordon, who was known to police, was believed to be experiencing homelessness in Trenton.

Charles Flanagan, a neighbor of the Gordon house on Viewpoint Lane, said that the suspect’s father, also named Andre Gordon, who is a certified electrician, and his wife, Karen, were from Jamaica, had lived in the house for 20 years, and had two school-age daughters.

The son had lived in the house briefly and then left, but visited occasionally, Flanagan said. He added that at the time of the shooting, his wife heard popping noises and then saw the younger Gordon speeding away in a car.

The shootings were a shock to the Falls neighborhood. Said Flanagan: ”I’ve been here 20 some years and I don’t think we ever had a cop sitting in front of anybody’s house for more than a minute.

“It’s a very quiet neighborhood.”

At the scene of the alleged carjacking at the Dollar General, store manager Ahad Mulla said he was not aware that the vehicle, a dark-gray 2016 Honda CRV, had been carjacked from the store’s lot until he saw the police cars and heard the sirens.

“We had no clue, even the customers,” he said. “Everyone was in the store, shopping.”

The store closed after the carjacking at the request of police. Authorities also issued a shelter-in-place order that resulted in the closure of the Oxford Valley Mall and Sesame Place Philadelphia — both about four miles from the shooting scenes — as well as the cancellation of the scheduled Bucks County St. Patrick’s Day Parade. That order was lifted early Saturday afternoon.

State Sen. Steve Santarsiero (D., Bucks) said he had been on his way to the parade when he was alerted to the active-shooter situation.

“This is just a horrible situation,” Santarsiero said.

Gordon will be held in New Jersey until he has a hearing to be returned to Bucks County, authorities said.

In the last two months at least three deadly crimes involving family members have occurred in Philadelphia’s suburbs.

On Feb. 7, six family members, including a man who had shot his relatives and fired at police before setting fire to his home, died in East Lansdowne, Delaware County.

In January, a 32-year-old Levittown man was charged with beheading his 68-year-old father.

Staff writers Vinny Vella and Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.