Asia Peterson frantically bolted from her Wilkinsburg apartment Tuesday afternoon when she heard her neighbor screaming several houses away on Ross Avenue.
Once she saw Johnathan Simmons walking around a police SUV with a gun in his hand, she panicked.
“I just kept screaming at him,” Peterson, 30, told TribLive, “ ‘Please put down the gun!’ ”
He didn’t, according to video of the encounter posted to social media.
A Wilkinsburg police officer fatally shot Simmons, 38, around 4:20 p.m. near the intersection of Swissvale and Ross avenues.
First responders rushed Simmons to UPMC Presbyterian. He died there less than three hours later.
His mother said he battled mental illness while caring for her. His neighbors knew him as someone prone to outbursts and erratic behavior.
“Everyone can have their opinion,” said Peterson, who called herself Simmons’ friend for the past five years, as she sat Thursday on a stoop outside her apartment. “But, you’re a cop. You have to make split-second decisions.
“I just wish it could’ve been done differently.”
Officer remains unnamed
A 43-second cellphone video of the encounter, which was posted to Facebook Tuesday night but quickly disappeared from social media, shows the officer shuffling around his parked vehicle as Simmons strode toward him. The officer fired a shot, striking Simmons in the chest.
TribLive was not able to independently corroborate the authenticity of the video.
Simmons’ death marked Wilkinsburg’s second homicide of 2026 — and at least the third person a police officer killed this year in Allegheny County.
Wilkinsburg officials — including the mayor, police chief, council president and vice president, borough manager and solicitor — refused to provide information about the officer involved or details about the shooting.
Allegheny County Police are investigating and plan to forward their findings to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office within 10 days, Superintendent Chris Kearns said Friday.
Kearns also refused to name the officer involved in the shooting.
“We never comment on that,” he said. “It’s up to the individual police department to decide whether they name the officer involved.”
Wilkinsburg officials have referred questions about the officer’s name, rank and length of service in the borough back to county police.
One law-enforcement expert reviewed the video of the encounter for TribLive and said the officer “was doing things we encourage officers to do.”
“The officer did try to use cover. He did try to create distance,” said Ashley Heiberger, a use-of-force expert and former Bethelehem police captain. “He did want to slow things down and take some time.
“In terms of what society wants officers to do regarding attempted deescalation … this cop did exactly what we’re asking.”
Police recover weapon
County police said early information shows the officer fired his gun after giving Simmons “numerous commands” to drop the weapon.
A police spokesman said the officer was on patrol when Simmons approached his vehicle in the 1000 block of Ross Avenue. That was not captured in the cellphone video.
The officer got out of the black SUV, its emergency lights flashing, and ordered the man to drop the gun, police said.
Simmons first appeared in the video after about 20 seconds. Until then, the officer hovered around the driver’s side of the SUV, sometimes crouching while looking to his right. At one point, he opened the driver’s door and leaned inside.
Suddenly, Simmons can be seen briskly walking in front of the SUV, clutching what appeared to be a handgun pointed in front of him.
The officer, who kept both hands on his gun, crouched and retreated from the driver’s side door while Simmons circled toward him as the two played cat and mouse.
The officer shifted toward the passenger-side rear of the SUV — always facing the suspect, knees bent, almost crouching.
Simmons continued to walk toward him. Then, the officer, standing on the sidewalk with the SUV between the two men, fired the fatal shot from close range.
Simmons fell to his knees and appeared to drop a gun, the footage showed. He seemed to scoop up something, perhaps what he had dropped, lifting his hand for a moment before quickly dropping it.
The officer, meanwhile, put distance between the two as Simmons sprawled onto his back.
Kearns, the police superintendent, said police recovered “a weapon” at the scene. He declined to say whether it was a gun.
“We’re going to have the lab take a look at it,” Kearns said.
Simmons had been known to carry a gun. When Wilkinsburg police arrested him for robbing a jitney driver in September 2009, he was carrying a black revolver loaded with five .32-caliber bullets, according to a criminal complaint.
The gun, which was operational, had been reported stolen in McKeesport five years earlier.
Simmons’ mother, Pamela Simmons, said Thursday her son didn’t own a gun.
‘Talking to people who weren’t there’
Simmons’ neighbors and friends knew little about him except that he tried to keep off the grid.
He had been squatting for years in an abandoned home at 1035 Ross Ave., Peterson and other neighbors said. Simmons’ mother said her son had been trying to pay property taxes on the home.
More than a dozen star-shaped, helium balloons — a makeshift memorial — were tied this week to a fence outside the three-story home, its aging bricks painted white.
By Thursday, someone had installed floor-to-ceiling boards behind the home’s front door. “No trespassing — violators will be prosecuted,” read a sign leaning against the door’s screen, its wire mesh torn in parts.
Allegheny County property records show the Clara Constance Foundation, which has a Pittsburgh mailing address, purchased the 2,200-square-foot home last year for $1. The foundation and its founder did not return calls or an email seeking comment.
Simmons left a trail in court records.
In 2006, a former partner sought and received a restraining order against him. No children were listed in court paperwork. The woman’s attorney did not return calls seeking comment.
In 2011, Simmons pleaded guilty to robbery, intimidating a witness and other charges in the jitney incident, court records show. A judge sentenced him to 8 to 16 years in prison.
Simmons was released after being incarcerated for 7 years, a state corrections official said. He later violated parole and returned to prison, leaving in 2022.
Simmons had battled mental health issues since childhood, when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, his mother said. But he never consistently received treatment for those issues.
Prison lacked services that could’ve helped him, according to his mother. When Simmons was released, he struggled to find steady employment.
“He’d help anybody — but he couldn’t keep a job because he was always talking to people who weren’t there,” Simmons, 63, said.
Others saw similar behavior.
On Tuesday, Pauleen Wise recognized Simmons only from past episodes outside her home at 1122 Ross Ave.
“Several times, in the street, you’d hear him — commotion, hollering, whatever,” Wise, 62, a Wilkinsburg High School alumna and lifelong borough resident, said. “He fights with himself. He hollers at himself.”
Wise didn’t see the shooting Tuesday but walked to the street during its aftermath, when police cruisers filled surrounding streets.
“When I yelled outside, they were already doing chest compressions,” Wise said. “You could tell he had some sort of mental issues.”
Sharon Tates, who has lived on Ross Avenue near Simmons for about seven years, didn’t know Simmons’ last name until this week.
“I thought he was actually a hermit-type,” Tates, 68, said Thursday. “But he’d have his episodes. He’d be loud, I suppose.”
‘He tried’
Peterson first met Simmons several years ago when he was dating her sister. She got to know Simmons better when she moved into her boyfriend’s Ross Avenue apartment.
Peterson said the best way to describe Simmons is by talking about where he lived. She watched him install windows and put up new trim there even though he didn’t own the property or have a lease.
“He put a lot of work into that house — it was his baby,” Peterson said.
“Every time he was out, he’d be buying plasterboard,” his mother said.
Simmons, a middle child whose two siblings live in the Greensburg area, lived just six blocks from his mother’s apartment on Kelly Avenue.
She said a home-health agency recently started paying him to care for her. Pamela Simmons said she suffers from various health issues.
Simmons showed up on time at 9 a.m. sharp every day, his mother said. When he didn’t arrive the morning of the shooting, she said, she knew something was wrong.
She said Wilkinsburg police have not called her since the shooting.
On Tuesday, though, a social worker from UPMC Presbyterian hospital did: “Is Johnathan Simmons your son?” she said she was asked.
Simmons said she didn’t get the chance to speak with her son before he died.
“They just didn’t deal with his problems,” she said, referring to years filled with doctors, social workers and authority figures.
Her eyes grew watery.
“All I can say is he tried.”