ALIQUIPPA — Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier would not say if a suspect has been identified in a Mother’s Day shooting that claimed the life of a 33-year-old woman.
However, he assured the public that several law enforcement agencies are investigating the homicide.
Rachael DelTondo of Aliquippa was shot and killed at 10:45 p.m. Sunday outside her mother’s home on Buchanan Street.
“We could not be taking this more seriously,” Lozier said of the investigation.
While standing outside the Aliquippa police station Tuesday morning, Lozier said shell casings collected at the scene “appear to be of the same batch, the same ammunition,” but added it would be “pure speculation” to say they were fired from the same gun. Such a determination will be made by experts at a state police crime lab, though the results often take months, he said.
Beaver County Coroner David Gabauer said DelTondo died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds. Neighbors reported hearing between 10 and 12 shots fired. Lozier said he believes the gunshots were fired from a close range.
He also confirmed at least one cellphone confiscated at the scene of the shooting had been taken to Harrisburg for forensic analysis. He would not name the owner of the cellphone.
“Forensically, phones and computers offer a lot of information,” he said.
While cellphone analysis often can be done locally, Lozier said “sometimes we need the assistance of other agencies because some phones are hard to unlock; some phones have information that has been deleted. There are other agencies that have better software than I have.”
Lozier said investigators are working to identify and interview witnesses, obtain potential footage from surveillance cameras and locate anyone who might have been driving past the area at the time of the shooting.
He called the neighborhood where DelTondo was shot, just off of Brodhead Road, “a very quiet, a very quaint neighborhood” that is home to several police officers from various jurisdictions.
“That’s a very stable neighborhood,” he said. “This is very out of anyone’s expectations for the neighborhood.”
Lozier said he could not identify a potential motive without a suspect. However, he said a previous police investigation into DelTondo was unrelated to her death.
DelTondo was the subject of an Aliquippa police incident report that was sent from an anonymous email address in November 2017 to officials at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School and members of the media. The report was from an incident in 2016 and led to her suspension from the school.
The police report described officers finding DelTondo and a juvenile, identified as a former student, together sitting in a parked car at an empty lot late at night.
DelTondo was never charged in the case.
“It’s shameful that this woman was painted with a police report that had been written that did not result in criminal charges,” Lozier said. “It was a personal vendetta against her at the time.”
He said, at the time, he wrote a letter to PA Cyber to reiterate that no charges were ever filed against DelTondo. PA Cyber officials said DelTondo was still an employee of the school, though she had remained suspended with pay.
While Lozier does not believe the leak of the police incident report is related to the homicide, he said it did prompt a state police investigation into the Aliquippa Police Department. The December 2017 investigation led to a temporary hold on the department’s access to some statewide databases of information, he said.
At the time, Eric Brewer, coordinator of Beaver County Emergency Management, said the 911 center was given new guidelines for how it provided information to Aliquippa police.
Investigators found it was an accidental release of information, Lozier said. The officer involved was reprimanded, but the issue was resolved in February and the department’s access to data was restored, he said.
Lozier acknowledged the speculation that DelTondo’s death could be related to a warrant served by the state police in March on the Aliquippa Municipal Building.
“I cannot comment on a grand jury investigation,” he said.
Based on the investigation so far, Lozier said he doesn’t believe the Aliquippa community is in any danger.
“We pour in every county resource, every police department resource and the state police into every one of these homicides (investigated throughout the region),” Lozier said. “We all want these to be solved for the sake of the citizens of Beaver County.”