(Reuters) – Six to eight people are feared dead in a house fire that broke out near Philadelphia on Wednesday, and two police officers responding to the blaze were wounded by gunfire from inside the home, officials said.
The suspected shooter was believed to have set fire to the home and was among those still inside, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said. News video showed flames and smoke billowing out of the two-story, wood-frame home.
The fire was burning too intensely to enter, so officials said they would wait until Thursday to search for victims, Stollsteimer told reporters.
“I will say with a heavy heart that we are afraid there might be more than one person in that in that house. We know the victim’s family had a lot of people living in that house including children. We’re aware that there were at least six to eight people who are unaccounted for from that family,” Stollsteimer said.
Officers responded to the home in East Lansdowne, a suburb just west of Philadelphia, after receiving a call that an 11-year-old girl had been shot.
They came under fire immediately, Stollsteimer said, adding that the officers appeared to be “doing well” when he and other senior officials visited them in the hospital.
“They gave us the thumbs up. Those guys are going to be OK,” said Stollsteimer, the chief prosecutor for the county, which has a population of about 575,000.
He declined to take questions from reporters until after the search on Thursday morning.
“It could be a lot of bad news tomorrow,” Stollsteimer said. “We’re hopeful that we are wrong, but because these family members are unaccounted for, we are concerned that they may have been inside the home that was set on fire.”
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta. Editing by Gerry Doyle)