NORTH BRADDOCK, Pa. — A North Braddock man died from pneumonia 17 years after being shot. Now, investigators are calling his death a homicide.
“He was a hero. If he wouldn’t have done that, people may have been killed. No one died that night because of the quick thinking of a few patrons,” Dawn Loughner told Channel 11.
Bill Loughner’s heroic acts at a North Braddock bar in June 2008, according to the medical examiner, cost him his life 17 years later.
The medical examiner ruled Bill’s recent death from pneumonia complications as a homicide, stemming back to that night, when two men barged into Crud’s Bar.
He pushed the men out of the building, and they started firing. Bill was shot in the head and arm, but survived.
Police never found the shooters.
“You don’t get to shoot somebody and just walk away. That’s not right,” Dawn said.
For the next 15 years, Dawn says her husband’s health drastically declined.
“He stopped being able to swallow well, and had to go to tube feeding, which is what led to the pneumonia,” she added.
This past December, Bill developed pneumonia and died from complications from his breathing tube, which caused him to aspirate.
If he hadn’t been shot, he wouldn’t have needed the breathing tube, which is why the medical examiner is calling his death a homicide.
“In my mind, it was always because of the shooting. It wouldn’t have been that way…he wouldn’t have been tube fed, incontinent, he wouldn’t have any of those issues without having been shot in the head,” she said.
County investigators tell us that they never closed this case, and they are still looking for the shooters 17 years later.
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