On the morning of March 16, Andre Gordon Jr. went to his father’s Levittown home and then to the nearby home of the mother of his children intent on murder, a Bucks County detective told a District Judge Wednesday during Gordon’s preliminary hearing in Doylestown.
Armed with an AR-15-style rifle, “he started hunting residents,” said Bucks County Detective Tim Furhmann, “methodically going from room to room.” The weapon, said Furhmann, is believed to be a “ghost gun,” meaning it was illegally assembled from a kit. It misfired several times during the attacks, the detective said.
When the hours-long rampage ended, Gordon’s stepmother, Karen Gordon, 57, his 13-year-old stepsister Kera Gordon, and Taylor Daniel, 25, the mother of his two young children, were dead.
The courtroom sat stunned, as Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn played recordings of the desperate 911 calls Karen Gordon made where she’s heard screaming for Gordon, whom she identifies as her stepson in the call, to stop.
Gunshots are heard, as Kera Gordon, too, is heard pleading, “please, please, please” help as Andre Gordon was pushing through a door to reach them.
In another 911 call, Taylor Daniel is heard repeatedly crying for help as her two daughters, ages three and five, prosecutors later said, were huddled under the Spiderman sheets on their toddler beds.
The wrenching call ended as Gordon allegedly shot Daniel. A moment later a child’s trembling voice is heard calling “Mommy.”
Investigators said Daniel died just two feet away from her children.
When the children were later asked by authorities what happened, investigators said the children told them their dad came in “and went pew, pew, pew.” One covered the other child’s mouth with her hand, she said, “so they don’t get pewed.”
In testimony Wednesday it was learned a 911 dispatcher misunderstood Karen Gordon during the chaotic call when she gave her address and sent police to the wrong house, briefly delaying the response to Viewpoint Lane.
Ring doorbell camera and police body camera footage of the crime scenes were also presented as evidence.
No motive for the killings was given.
According to testimony, Gordon first carjacked a woman in Trenton, where he was living, and drove to the Levittown section of Falls Township. Wearing a balaclava and carrying the gun in a black bag, he first went to his father’s Viewpoint Lane home where he broke the glass on the front door with the barrel of the gun to gain entry. There, he allegedly killed his stepmother and stepsister.
His father — Andre Gordon Sr. — narrowly escaped death by hiding under a bed, authorities said. The alleged shooter’s 14-year-old stepsister, Ava, was able to hide under clothes in her bedroom closet. A cousin who was visiting from London also survived.
Gordon, 26, then drove to the Daniel house on Edgewood Lane, where he had talked with her outside on March 8, Taylor's mother Nancy Daniel testified. She said she asked him to leave that night and he did.
Taylor Daniel and her two children shared the home with Nancy and Nancy’s son John.
When Taylor Daniel saw Gordon approaching March 16, she told her children who had been watching cartoons on TV to go to their room and lock the door, investigators said.
Nancy Daniel testified she stayed in her bedroom when Taylor banged on her door, saying Gordon had a gun. As Taylor frantically screamed for help from a 911 dispatcher from the bedroom she shared with her daughters, she was fatally shot. The dispatcher’s voice asking, “ma’am are you still there?”
Daniel ran to the kitchen to get an axe handle and “started wailing on him” with it, she testified. He knocked her to the floor and hit her with the butt of the gun, injuring her in the head and arms.
“Then he up and left,” said Daniel.
Returning to her daughter, she tried to revive her with CPR, she said. “I thought she was dead, but I wasn’t sure.”
Taylor Daniel had begun the process of filing for a protection from abuse order, her mother testified, but she never did.
Gordon refused to leave his cell at the Bucks County Correctional Facility Wednesday for the hearing. District Judge Terrence Hughes allowed it to proceed without him, despite his public defender’s objection.
He is being held without bail. The district attorney said she will seek the death penalty.
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