A Pennsylvania man accused of opening fire at a car wash early Sunday morning and murdering four people — including his ex-girlfriend and the married man she was allegedly having an affair with — was driven by jealously and rage stemming from a recent breakup, family members said. State police said Timothy Smith, 28, was armed with a semi-automatic rifle, a .308-caliber rifle and a handgun and was wearing a body armor carrier 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 (89 kilometers) southeast of Pittsburgh. Timothy Smith, 28, is accused of going to Ed’s Car Wash in Melcroft, about 55 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, around 3 a.m. and shooting at a group of people, killing his ex-girlfriend Chelsie Cline, 25; William Porterfield, 27; Courtney Snyder, 23; and Seth Cline, 21, police said. Smith is not expected to survive after suffering a gunshot wound that was possibly self-inflicted, officials said. He said the suspected gunman was also discovered at the scene with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and was taken to a hospital, where he was on life-support. Authorities would not reveal how Smith knew the victims, but Chelsie Cline’s half-sister, Sierra Kolarik, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that Smith had developed an obsession with Cline. Cline shared a meme on her Facebook page last week that read, “After this week, I rlly (sic) need to get taken out ... on a date or by a sniper either one is fine w me at this point.” A Facebook friend of hers named Tim Smith replied, “I could do both.”

Porterfield’s pregnant wife, Jenna Porterfield, 24, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that a state police investigator told her that Smith was a jealous former boyfriend of Cline. “I was told my husband was cheating on me with [one of the victims], and that she had broken up with her previous boyfriend two days ago, and he went crazy and shot them all,” she said, though it was unclear if police had told her that information. Citing the ongoing investigation, officials said at a press conference that they couldn’t comment on the relationship between Smith and the four victims and haven’t released a potential motive. I’m not going to hold that against him,” Porterfield told the newspaper. They said he shot Porterfield and Cline when they got out of their car and walked to the side of the car wash.

Snyder and Seth Cline arrived in a pickup truck at the same time and were both shot and killed in their vehicle, state police said. While shots were being fired into the front of the vehicle, a woman who had been riding in the back seat was able to hide and survived with minor injuries from breaking glass, police said. Cayleigh Myers said she was friends with Seth Cline, Chelsie Cline’s half-sibling, and described the construction worker as “very outgoing, very funny and very smart.”

“You always had fun when you were around him,” Myers said. Bukovac said police were on the scene by the time he arrived and that he had few other details about what happened.
The gunman who fatally shot four people at a car wash in the Melcroft suburb of Saltlick Township in Pennsylvania the previous day dies at a hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.