Harrowing 911 calls reveal the final moments of victims killed in Falls Township shooting spree

Andre Gordon Jr. pursued his relatives like a hunter on the morning of March 16, investigators said, “methodically” going from room to room in their homes. He was armed with a rifle and looking to kill.

Those tense moments were recorded in 911 calls played during Gordon’s preliminary hearing Wednesday on murder charges in the deaths of his stepmother, half-sister, and the mother of his daughters during an hours-long rampage in Falls Township that drew national attention.

The recordings captured the final words of Karen Gordon, 57, who begged for her stepson to stop; of Kera Gordon, 13, who held shut a door that Gordon tried to push through; and of Taylor Daniel, 25, who pleaded with an emergency dispatcher to send help as her two daughters lay huddled together nearby in fear of their father.

Daniel’s call ended abruptly as her screams faded. After a moment of silence, the small, uncertain voice of her 5-year-old daughter called out for “Mommy.”

Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said after Wednesday’s hearing that even she, a veteran prosecutor, found the calls difficult to bear.

“I don’t know that I’ve heard anything so emotional,” Schorn said. “In the final moments of Karen Gordon’s life, she noticed her daughter was fatally shot in her arms, and then she’s taken just moments later. It’s unimaginable.”

But the man whose actions prompted those calls wasn’t in the Doylestown courtroom to hear them: Gordon refused to leave his cell at the county jail for his scheduled hearing.

Gordon’s attorney, Deborah Weinman, asked for the hearing to be continued, citing potential issues with Gordon’s competency to stand trial.

But Magisterial District Judge Terrence Hughes ruled that hearing be held in absentia, without Gordon present. And afterward, Hughes ruled that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial on charges of first-degree murder and related crimes.

Weinman did not comment after the hearing.

The motive for Gordon’s shooting spree remained unclear.

On the day of the slayings, authorities said, Gordon, 26, carjacked a woman in Trenton and drove to his father’s home on Viewpoint Lane armed with a 7.62mm rifle. The rifle was a “ghost gun” that had been illegally assembled from a kit purchased online, according to testimony Wednesday.

Wearing a balaclava and hiding the gun in a backpack, Gordon knocked on the front door, according to footage from a Ring doorbell camera played during the hearing. When Andre Gordon Sr. answered the door, he demanded to know why his son, who prosecutors said was not welcomed or expected at the home, was there.

In response, the younger Gordon charged at his father with the gun and kicked at the door as his father slammed it closed. He used the barrel of the rifle to smash a window in the door and began firing into the home.

Gordon then gained access to the home and went from room to room, looking for and firing at his family members, prosecutors said. Several bullets narrowly missed his father, who was hiding under the bed in the main bedroom.

But Gordon’s stepmother and half-sister, who sought refuge in a bedroom that had been converted into an office, were shot. Gordon, hearing his stepmother’s call to 911, fired at least six times through the room’s closed door, striking and killing both.

His 14-year-old half-sister narrowly survived the attack by hiding under a pile of clothes in a closet in her bedroom. Gordon forced his way into that room, but didn’t check inside its closet, prosecutors said.

He then left the house and drove a few minutes away to a home on Edgewood Lane that Daniel shared with her mother, brother, and children. Seeing Gordon, Daniel hid her daughters in their bedroom, covered them with their Spider-Man blanket and told them to be quiet, prosecutors said.

Daniel’s mother, Nancy, testified Wednesday that she hid in her bedroom as she heard Gordon force his way into the home. Moments later, she heard gunshots and screaming, she said, and walked out to see Gordon standing over her daughter.

She said she ran to the kitchen and grabbed an axe handle, which she used to hit Gordon in an attempt to protect her daughter. Gordonthen struck her with the butt of his rifle, knocking her to the floor, where he hit her seven more times before fleeing, she said.

Gordon later carjacked a second person, authorities said, and returned to Trenton, where he was arrested after an hours-long standoff with police.

Daniel testified that her daughter had had problems with Gordon in the weeks leading up to her murder, and was considering getting a restraining order against him because of previous instances of abuse.

But for, whatever reason, she hadn’t done so.