A man drove a car into a small-town crowd fundraising for fire victims before fleeing the scene to kill another person with a hammer in PA

The small town of Berwick, Pennsylvania cannot catch a break.

While fundraising for the ten victims of a house fire which occurred in Berwick on August 5th, the community suffered a vicious attack by a driver who plowed his car into the crowd–killing one and injuring seventeen further–before fleeing the scene to Nescopeck, where he proceeded to beat a woman to death in a hammer attack.

Thirteen of the seventeen injured in the crash are being treated at the nearby Geisinger Medical Center.

The suspect was arrested by Pennsylvania State Police at the scene of the hammer attack in Nescopeck, and the vehicle he was driving matched the description of the vehicle behind the crash in Berwick.

At this time, officials do not suspect the man arrested of being involved in the house fire which occurred earlier this month, although, that incident is still under investigation.

Berwick’s government put out a public announcement that “there is no ongoing threat to the public” and also revealing that the suspect is being held at the state trooper barracks in Shickshinny while he awaits criminal charges. They declined to name the suspect.

The tragic community fundraiser was for the funerals and families of  the seven adults and three young children who had died in a house fire in Berwick on the 5th, although beyond coincidence the Saturday incident appears to be entirely unrelated to the fire, according to officials.

Berwick is a town of just 10,000 people, and, less than a mile away, Nescopeck is a town of under 2,000–for such tragic events to be happening so closely together, with a dozen residents of the towns dying in just over a week, is deeply traumatic to the communities.