DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The Bucks County man accused of shooting and killing his stepmother, half-sister and the mother of his children, and carjacking two other people is ordered to stand trial on murder charges, despite refusing to attend his preliminary hearing on Wednesday.
Andre Gordon Jr., 26, refused to leave his cell at the county jail to be at a preliminary hearing on murder and related charges stemming from what prosecutors say was a shooting rampage across Bucks County in the morning hours of March 16.
Despite a request from the defense, the hearing went on in his absence. Prosecutors argued Gordon is aware of the charges against him and the judicial process.
During the hearing, prosecutors played recordings of two 911 calls.
The first was from Andre Gordon’s stepmother, 52-year-old Karen Gordon, as she and Gordon’s 13-year-old half-sister were shot through the bedroom door they were trying to block. In the recording, before she dies, Karen Gordon identifies the shooter as Andre Gordon Jr.
“In the final moments of Karen Gordon's life, she knows that her daughter was fatally shot in her arms,” said Bucks County District Attorney Jen Schorn. “And then she is taken moments later. I mean, that's just unimaginable.”
The second call came from 25-year-old Taylor Daniel, Gordon’s estranged girlfriend and the mother of his two children. In the recording, Daniel is heard telling her 3-year-old and 5-year-old daughters to hide under a blanket, then screaming as the man she identifies as Andre Gordon breaks down a bedroom door and shoots and kills her.
“Taylor tries to protect her daughters. And she does, in fact, do that. And she's fatally shot. And then you hear the little voice saying, 'Mommy?' from Taylor's daughter, it's just heartbreaking,” said Schorn.
“It's simply awful. It's literally capturing the events, their murders, unfolding. And then I don't know what's worse: what you hear on the call or the dead silence thereafter. It's chilling. It's chilling.”
Gordon is also accused of carjacking two people, before and after the shootings, hours before he was taken into custody in Trenton, New Jersey.
Every one of a long list of charges was held for trial. Schorn says they plan to seek the death penalty.