A Fayette County man shot and killed another man and then himself early Saturday, drawing police back to an apartment they had left just 45 minutes earlier.
Uniontown police had come to the apartment, Pershing Court No. 122, to settle a domestic dispute. They found Leann Settles home alone, her shirt ripped.
The same officers — David Rutter and Eric Hanula — returned at 5:41 a.m. after a 911 dispatcher reported another disturbance there. They arrived in time to hear Settles inside, screaming. She yelled, "Put it down! Put it down!" said Phillip W. Jones, the city detective investigating the second incident.
Settles ran from the apartment as the officers approached, Jones said. Her former boyfriend, Darnell Poole, shot himself in the head in the hallway.
Both officers witnessed the shot, Jones said. Settles also saw it.
The police then heard a second man, who was calling out for help. They found Gerald Cook, also from the Uniontown area, inside, on a floor, shot in the chest and abdomen. Cook, 30, was taken to Uniontown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Poole, 25, was known to police. Officers had responded to domestic disputes between him and Settles at several residences, said Jones, the detective. The couple had had children, Jones said, but none was in the residence at the time of Saturday's shootings.
Poole used a 9 mm Smith & Wesson in both shootings, Jones said. He died instantly.
Poole, a former resident of Farragut Street in Uniontown, pleaded guilty to federal drug charges in 1998. He admitted he sold approximately 10 kilograms of cocaine while working for Edward "New York Ed" Monroe, one of three men serving life sentences for the 1995 murder of Dunbar resident Patricia Malec.
Jones said police found "a substantial amount" of cocaine in the Pershing Court apartment Saturday morning.
