John Kroll was a 55-year-old carpenter and handyman who was shot and killed after completing a repair at an apartment in Wilkinsburg on a Wednesday in March 2000. He had been called to fix a door in the unit of Ronald Taylor; a coworker described Kroll as not someone who looked for arguments. After Kroll and another maintenance worker, Mike DeWitt, addressed the problem, Taylor became upset, reportedly followed them, and shot Kroll in the chest.

The violence did not end there. After setting his apartment on fire—triggering the building alarms—Taylor went on to shoot several people at nearby fast-food restaurants, killing a 71-year-old man at a Burger King and later shooting three people at a McDonald’s, one of whom, a 20-year-old man, later died of his injuries. Taylor fled to an office building, where a hostage standoff ended with his surrender to police. He was arrested and charged with multiple counts including criminal homicide, aggravated assault, firearms offenses, causing a catastrophe, arson, and ethnic intimidation; court documents say he expressed animus toward white males and used racial epithets about the maintenance workers.

Did anyone in Wilkinsburg at the time know about tensions between Taylor and building maintenance that might shed light on why the situation escalated?