CNN — Two Pennsylvania police officers were shot Wednesday after responding to a call about the apparent shooting of a child at a home that was then set on fire, the local district attorney said.
Authorities received a 911 call just before 3:50 p.m. Wednesday that “an 11-year-old girl had been shot,” at a home, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said in a Wednesday evening news conference. Delaware County is near Philadelphia.
Officers from three different agencies responded and were “immediately met by gunfire,” Stollsteimer said. Two officers were struck and were “dragged out of danger” by other officers present, he said.
Both officers were taken to the hospital and are in stable condition at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia. The officers, veterans of two different departments, both sustained “not life-threatening injuries,” the district attorney said.
After officers responded to the shooting scene, the house was set ablaze, Stollsteimer said.
But that’s just about all authorities knew as of Wednesday evening, as fire officials still worked to subdue the flames more than two and a half hours after the 911 call.
“We don’t know who was in the house, we don’t know who the shooter was, we don’t know how many people are in there, we don’t know their status, we don’t know if they’re alive,” the district attorney told reporters.
Authorities are also continuing to probe “whether or not an 11-year-old girl was or was not shot,” he said, and who shot the officers.
“We intend to hold everyone accountable,” Stollsteimer added.
Police officers were still working to secure the scene Wednesday evening. The gunfire has stopped, but authorities have not yet been able to make entry as fire officials worked to ensure the flames have all been put out.
“There’s nobody else in danger. We’ve made sure that the entire block has been emptied of people and that fire is mostly under control,” Stollsteimer said.
“But again, we’re not going to make entry into that house until we know that the fire’s under control and that it’s safe for those officers to go in there. We don’t want another single officer hurt tonight in Delaware County.”
Questions around the apparent shooting of a child
Earlier, a Delaware County law enforcement source had told CNN an individual had barricaded themselves in the house.
Another source briefed on the situation also told CNN earlier the incident began after someone claiming to be a child apparently called police and said they had been shot. But the source said it was unclear whether a child had actually been shot.
In a separate interview before the news conference, Stollsteimer told CNN affiliate WPVI the person who was inside the house set fire to it.
Authorities were not sure whether a child is involved, he said.
“We’ve got no independent knowledge whether or not there is an 11-year-old, was there an 11-year-old shot, who was inside the house, all that is to be determined,” he said.
A chaotic scene and massive flames
Footage from WPVI throughout Wednesday afternoon showed a chaotic scene unfold around the home.
The house was seen ablaze and in less than an hour, raging flames had swallowed most of it, leaving nothing but a charred shell and unleashing massive black plumes of smoke over the neighborhood.
It’s unclear how the fire started and when.
During the initial response, groups of firefighters were seen staged near the scene waiting to respond to the blaze as neighbors gathered down the street and looked on.
At some point – and with the fire still running rampant – an armored vehicle was seen ramming the house on the WPVI footage.
“I heard a lot of gunshots as I just came from the store … and I just (saw) cops running from everywhere,” one neighbor told the station, adding they heard authorities yelling about an “active shooter.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN’s Amy Simonson contributed to this report.