Pittsburgh shooting: Identity of psych clinic gunman is mystery

The identity and motive of a gunman who opened fire in the lobby of a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic remained shrouded in mystery Friday, a day after the attack that left him and a therapist dead and seven people wounded.

As of Friday morning, officials could say only that the gunman was a white male. No age has been determined.

Efforts to run the man’s fingerprints through national databases have so far turned up no matches, according to the Allegheny County medical examiner’s office. The man was apparently shot to death by university police when he opened fire with two semiautomatic handguns at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic on Thursday.

“The identification is unknown,” Marty Coyne, a supervisor at the medical examiner’s office, said in a telephone interview. The official cause of death is pending an autopsy and tests, including toxicology, he said.

The fingerprints taken from the body are run through local databases then national databases. So far, there have been no hits, Coyne said. The process of identifying someone can take minutes or hours.

And sometimes it can take years, Coyne said.

“We can have an ID in half an hour or three to four years,” Coyne said of past efforts. “There is no framework to know.”

Given the growing homeless population, it isn’t unusual for a body to be brought in without identification papers, Coyne said. Further, many people have never been fingerprinted -- once a condition for serving in the military or seeking some jobs.

If identification through fingerprints fails, the ID search goes to more difficult markers such as dental records.

Officials have identified the other person killed in the attack, however. He is Michael Schaab, 25, of Greensburg, Pa., Coyne said. Schaab is a therapist.

The incident began about 1:40 p.m. Thursday, according to officials. The gunman entered the clinic, affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, and began shooting. There was an exchange of gunfire with campus police.

Schaab was pronounced dead at the scene about 3 p.m.

Seven people were injured in the shooting and five remained hospitalized Friday morning. All are expected to recover.

According to the hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian, two of the injured were in serious condition, two in fair and one in good condition. The ages range from 35 to 64 years old. None have been named.

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Michael.muskal@latimes.com