Joshua Brian Hamilton was 19 when he was fatally shot in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood on the night of Thursday, January 20, 2022. Officers responded shortly after 10 p.m. to a Loyal Way residence and found Hamilton in the kitchen with gunshot wounds to his neck and arm. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide; a pathologist concluded the wounds made it impossible for Hamilton to have fired the fatal shot himself.

Multiple firearms were recovered at the scene, including a rifle, a shotgun, and a semiautomatic pistol. A witness said they heard the two men arguing before a loud bang and that one of the men, 19-year-old James Linnert of the St. Clair neighborhood, told others Hamilton had pointed a shotgun at him and that it discharged when he pushed it away. Forensic evidence did not support that account. Linnert was arrested at the scene and charged with criminal homicide.

Hamilton was remembered as kind and caring, a volunteer at food banks, an organ donor, a piano player who skated and worked at Family Dollar and in construction. Did anyone in the area see or hear anything that night or know more about what led to the argument?