A suspended Pennsylvania school teacher was gunned down while standing on her mother’s driveway on Mother’s Day, police said.
Rachael DelTondo, 32, was returning from an ice cream shop Sunday night when she was struck by a hail of bullets on the driveway outside her family’s Aliquippa home, KDKA reported. Her death was ruled a homicide.
“I counted six shots that I heard,” Fred Poore, a neighbor, told KDKA about the shooting. Several neighbors said they heard up to 12 gunshots.
DelTondo died of multiple gunshot wounds to the torso. Police are hunting for the suspect, but authorities have released no description as of Tuesday. Officials said they are looking at a cellphone for information.
It’s unclear what prompted the deadly shooting.
DelTondo was an elementary school teacher at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, an online public school in Midland, until she was suspended in October 2017, Brian Hayden, the school’s CEO, told the media. The school issued the suspension after school officials received an anonymous email about a former police report filed involving DelTondo and an underage boy that was not a student at Pennsylvania Cyber.
Hayden said the school reported the incident to authorities under Pennsylvania law and placed DelTondo on paid suspension.
“We were saddened to learn of the tragic death of Rachel DelTondo, apparently the result of a violent incident in the City of Aliquippa. We have no additional information beyond what is being reported by local media,” Hayden said in a statement. “We express our sympathy to her family and coworkers and will support them in any way possible in the weeks and months ahead as they mourn her passing.”
DelTondo had been teaching at Pennsylvania Cyber for nearly 10 years.
A mother of a former Aliquippa High School student also told WPXI about an incident involving DelTondo and the woman’s 16-year-old son. A police report from 2016 said the two were found in a “steamed-up” parked car around 2 a.m. She had told police the boy had called her because “he was upset and needed someone to take to.” She insisted they were friends and that she didn’t want her fiance to know about the meeting.
The report said no charges were filed in the incident.
The 32-year-old was supposed to get married prior to her suspension. The wedding was ultimately scrapped, KDKA reported.
