Pittsburgh father seeks help in finding daughter's killer a year later

Ten days shy of one year since his daughter was gunned down on a Pittsburgh street, Robert Washington pleaded for help not only catching his own child’s killer, but for help catching the culprits in all of the city’s unsolved homicides.

“We need some closure,” said Washington, whose 27-year-old daughter Ebony McCary died Aug. 2. “There are a lot of parents in Pittsburgh just like me, and I’m just asking for all the real men and women to take control and take control of the neighborhoods.”

Speaking after a regularly scheduled Pittsburgh police media briefing on Thursday, Washington described his daughter as a vibrant woman who was a towel girl for the Steelers and once received James Harrison’s shirt at the end of a game.

“Do you know what it’s like to look in the mirror and see your daughter’s face? To look at your hands and see your daughter’s hands?” he said. “It’s unexplainable, but I’m not up here strictly for me, I’m up here for all the other people that are getting killed in the city of Pittsburgh. It’s enough.

“My daughter is gone,” Washington said, stressing that he wants to keep other parents from feeling his pain and other young people from feeling his daughter’s pain. “She’s no longer here. She’s 27 years old, just snuffed out.”

McCary is among the 51 people killed in the city in 2021, most of whom – including McCary – were shot to death.

Already this year, there have been 40 homicides. That’s 21% more than there were at this time last year.

There have also been 75 nonfatal shootings so far this year, including two Saturday and one on Monday.

In one incident in the city’s Marshall-Shadeland neighborhood, a man sustained a gunshot wound to the leg, telling police he’d been shot while he was out walking. Major Crimes Cmdr. Richard Ford said that further investigation showed that it was, in fact, a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It wasn’t clear whether it was intentional or accidental.

Saturday evening, someone opened fire on a group gathered at a cookout at a pavilion near Brighton Heights Park. Ford said someone in the backseat of a four-wheel drive vehicle shot multiple times at the group, hitting one man in the leg. Ford said investigators have no suspects, and cooperation from the victim has been scarce.

On Monday night, a shootout between two groups of young people injured two, including a 10-year-old boy who was uninvolved and inside a nearby home at the time. A 19-year-old man was also injured,

Ford said security footage from the scene showed a group of people walking on Zeyphr Avenue when they came across another group and a shootout erupted.

“In the video you have five juveniles and not one, not two, not three, not four but all five produced firearms and can be seen on the video firing in the direction of the other group,” Ford said, noting that such footage points to the fact that “we have a lot of younger kids that are possessing these guns and they’re not afraid to fire them.”