Employee shot dead in Pennsylvania municipal building

CRESCO, Pa. — A township employee was shot and killed inside a Pennsylvania municipal building Tuesday morning, officials said. A gunman walked inside the Paradise Township municipal building about 8:20 a.m. and opened fire, according to police and township officials.

State and local police rushed to the municipal building in the Pocono Mountains, about 100 miles north of Philadelphia, and took the suspect into custody without incident.

The victim was identified as Michael Tripus, 65, of Stroudsburg. The township’s website listed him as the sewage enforcement and building code officer. Police said David Green, 72, of Swiftwater, was taken into custody.

State police haven’t said what motivated the shooting, and it wasn’t immediately clear how or whether the Green and Tripus knew each other.

“That is something we’re still working on right now,” Trooper David Peters told reporters at the scene.

The victim was a longtime township employee, according to Gary Konrath, chairman of the township’s Board of Supervisors.

Konrath said he was not in the building at the time but spoke to the township’s executive secretary, who was.

“She’s extremely shaken up,” he said.

Konrath said she told him the gunman is “not someone they are aware of. No one appears to recognize the individual.”

“You say this a hundred times, but you wouldn’t think it would happen here,” Konrath told the Allentown Morning Call.

The township is in a rural area and has a population of about 3,200. It employs three full-time workers and one part-time worker in the office, and six on the road crew. The township building has no security camera, but there is a panic button that links to 911, according to Konrath.

Paradise Township is about 20 miles north of Ross Township, where a gunman opened fire at a Board of Supervisors’ meeting in 2013, killing three.

Article via CBSNews