Bridgette Mehalic settled wearily into the wooden chair of a Downtown Pittsburgh courtroom in January expecting justice.
Instead, she got heartache.
Mehalic was sure jurors would convict the man charged with killing her daughter Jacquelyn, 33, at a North Side bus stop during a wild shootout more than three years earlier.
To her left on the trial’s final day, clutching Mehalic’s hand, sat LaRonda Averytt, once a stranger, now an unlikely partner in shared grief.
Averytt’s 59-year-old mother Betty also was gunned down at the bus stop that Saturday night. She and Jacquelyn were innocent bystanders as two groups battled each other.
There was a third casualty: 20-year-old John Hornezes Jr., whom police suspected was involved.
The killings on Oct. 15, 2022, marked the city’s deadliest spasm of violence that year, a triple homicide that spawned revenge shootings, terrorized residents and frustrated politicians desperate to stem the tide of guns onto city streets.
“It was one of those boiling points,” recalled Councilman Bobby Wilson, a lifelong North Sider whose district includes the spot where the women were standing. “The community was going forward, and this really was like two steps back.”
Less than three weeks later, police had arrested three people. But homicide charges against two of them were later dropped, leaving Jaylone Hines as the sole person facing a possible murder rap.
Mehalic and Averytt had traveled a long road together, propping each other up through trauma and trial. Now their journey appeared to be nearing an end. They believed justice was within their grasp.
But when the foreman handed in the verdict, Mehalic’s confidence evaporated.