A gunman hopped into the back seat of a car in Uptown early Tuesday and shot two people in the back of the head execution-style, killing a Greene County woman and critically injuring her boyfriend. Nine hours later, a man walking his dog in McBride Park in Lincoln Place found the body of a woman in a picnic shelter. The victim had been beaten and possibly sexually assaulted, Pittsburgh police said. These latest homicides are straining the resources of investigators, who are dealing with a near-record number of killings this year. Gunshots rang out at 12:30 a.m. and a black Lincoln crashed into the steps leading to a house in the 200 block of Lombard Street. There police found Mary Lee Clevanger, 47, of Waynesburg, dead in the passenger seat and her boyfriend holding a cloth to his head. Police hope the boyfriend, whom police declined to identify, will help lead them to a suspect. The Hill District man, 43, was in critical condition at Mercy Hospital, Uptown. He was expected to survive and was talking to police, authorities said. Investigators said the couple picked up an unknown man on Fifth Avenue, Uptown, who shot both victims in the head -- causing the car to crash -- before running away. Police declined to say whether the motive involved drugs or robbery. In a year when the number of killings in Allegheny County is expected to eclipse the record-setting year of 1993, days such as yesterday are becoming commonplace, authorities said. It was the seventh time this year that city police have investigated multiple homicides in one day. "We can handle it, but we're running thin," said Assistant Chief William Mullen, who brought in extra detectives from other squads to help with the killings in the Hill District and Lincoln Place. "The problem is we have a lot of other investigations going on, and we drop everything to run on new ones like these," he said. "It makes it tough to stay on top, but we're managing." The Allegheny County Coroner's Office identified the woman found in McBride Park shortly after 9 a.m. as Noreen Apjok, 37, of Coal Road, Munhall. Apjok's partially clothed body was found underneath a picnic table inside a pavilion in a wooded section of the park. Interviews are being conducted to determine her whereabouts and activities prior to her death, police said. "It looks like this will be a difficult case," Mullen said. There have been 66 homicides in the city and 102 in the county this year. The record is 83 in the city and 118 countywide in 1993.

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---