A 19-year-old man from Carnegie has been arrested over a Thursday-night shooting at an apartment building in Butler City, Pennsylvania, in which a woman was grazed in the head by a bullet and a man was shot in the leg, Butler City Police said. Kharim Paige was taken into custody early on Saturday morning, November 7, in Monroeville, and police say he was the person who fired the gun on the night of November 5 in the 400 block of West North Street before fleeing the scene in a car.

Source: WISR / Butler Radio, reporting Butler City Police

The shooting happened on Thursday night, November 5, at an apartment building on West North Street in Butler, the county seat of Butler County in western Pennsylvania. WPXI, which reported the shooting that same evening, said two people were injured at the apartment building and that police were searching for a possible suspect vehicle in the hours after the gunfire.

Source: WPXI, Butler County

Two people wounded, both recovering

One woman had her head grazed by a bullet and was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital, Butler City Police said. A man was shot in the leg and was taken to a hospital in Pittsburgh. Police said both victims are recovering. Neither victim has been publicly named in the police statements reported so far, and police have not described any relationship between the victims and the accused.

A head graze and a leg wound can both turn fatal with a small change in the bullet's path, and the case is being treated as a serious felony shooting rather than a minor disturbance: the accused is facing numerous felony charges, according to police, although the exact list of charges had not been published in the police statements carried by local outlets as of Sunday.

How police say they identified the accused

Investigators used video surveillance and interviewed witnesses to identify Paige as the alleged shooter, Butler City Police said. Police allege he fired the gun in the 400 block of West North Street and then took off in a car and fled the scene. He was arrested early Saturday morning in Monroeville, in Allegheny County east of Pittsburgh — a different county from where the shooting happened — and is now being held in the Butler County Prison.

Paige is 19 and from Carnegie, a borough in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh. Butler City is roughly 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, and the arrest in Monroeville means the search for the accused crossed county lines within the Pittsburgh region before he was brought back to Butler County, where the case will be prosecuted.

Neighbours were already frustrated

WPXI's report on the night of the shooting noted that neighbours around the West North Street apartment building were frustrated with violence in the area. That frustration is part of the background to this arrest: a shooting at a residential building, in the early evening hours when WPXI first reported it at 8:33 p.m. on November 5, is the kind of incident that brings a whole street into an investigation, and police statements since then have stressed that this case is not finished.

What happens next

Paige is in the Butler County Prison facing numerous felony charges, police said. His case will move through the Butler County courts, beginning with the preliminary stages at which the charges are formally tested, while detectives continue the investigation they say will produce further arrests. Police have not announced a motive for the shooting, have not said whether the victims were the intended targets, and have not released the victims' names — those are among the details investigators are expected to address as the case develops.

For residents of the West North Street area, the immediate questions are who else police intend to arrest and whether the apartment building where two people were shot on a Thursday night will see a heavier police presence in the coming days. Awaaz Punjab will update this story if Butler City Police name additional accused or publish the full charge list.