Gina Evans was seriously wounded but got her children out as her husband, pediatric physician Idris Evans, fought the attacker, police said.
EDGEWOOD, Pa. — Before police found the accused attacker hiding behind another home, before doctors pronounced pediatric critical-care physician Idris Evans dead and before investigators began searching for a motive, Gina Evans had one immediate task: getting her two children out of the house alive.
Police and court records describe a family forced into a rapid escape after a man allegedly entered the Evans home in Edgewood shortly after midnight Sept. 24 and attacked the parents in their bedroom. Gina Evans, who suffered serious injuries, yelled for the couple’s children, ages 8 and 12, to leave and go to a neighbor’s home. Both children escaped without physical injuries. Gina Evans also made it out and helped summon police. Her husband, 46-year-old Idris Evans, was taken to a hospital but died. Police arrested Elijah Hemingway, 32, nearby and charged him with criminal homicide, aggravated assault, burglary and criminal trespass.
The children’s escape is a defining part of the sequence investigators have assembled. According to the criminal complaint, Idris and Gina Evans were sleeping on an upper floor when they awoke to an assault. Gina Evans described the attacker as a man armed with a kitchen knife and wearing only underwear. She told investigators he made statements involving God during the confrontation. Police said the couple resisted. Furniture and mirrors were damaged in the room, and investigators later concluded that injuries to Hemingway’s hand were consistent with the victims fighting back. The account portrays not a single unopposed assault but a sustained struggle during which different members of the family were trying to survive and separate themselves from the danger.
Gina Evans’ ability to communicate with the children mattered because the attack occurred while they were still inside the house. The children followed her instruction and reached safety at a neighbor’s residence, police said. Gina Evans eventually escaped as well, despite suffering multiple wounds. Officers responding to a stabbing report shortly after 12:30 a.m. found both adults badly injured. Emergency crews transported them for treatment. Idris Evans later died, while Gina Evans initially remained in critical condition. Six days after the attack, Allegheny County police confirmed that she had been released from the hospital, marking the first major improvement publicly reported in the family’s immediate aftermath.
Police then turned from rescue to a search of the surrounding neighborhood. A K-9 team from the Monroeville Police Department located Hemingway behind a nearby house, according to authorities. A neighbor later recalled seeing a heavy police presence and officers moving through backyards during the search. Hemingway had cuts on his hand and was taken for medical treatment before being detained. Investigators said they believed he had entered the Evans residence through a rear window and made his way to the bedroom. At one point during the attack, police said, he demanded Gina Evans’ car keys. She handed them over, but investigators found no indication that he drove the vehicle away or attempted to do so.
The surviving witness also supplied police with one of the case’s most puzzling details. Gina Evans said she had never seen Hemingway before that night, but she remembered her husband calling the attacker “Elijah.” She could not be certain whether Hemingway had already said his own name, leaving investigators unable to treat the remark as proof of a prior relationship. Police said soon after the killing that they were trying to determine whether Hemingway and Idris Evans had known each other. Neighbors interviewed by local news organizations said the accused man did not look familiar to them. Authorities likewise did not announce a motive. Those unanswered questions sit alongside the more firmly established chronology of the family’s escape.
Hemingway disputed the police account after he was taken into custody. According to court records, he told investigators that Idris Evans had invited him to the residence and later attacked him with a knife. Hemingway claimed he took the weapon away and stabbed the couple in self-defense. Allegheny County police said they found no evidence supporting that version and instead alleged that he entered through the rear window while the family slept. The competing claims will ultimately be tested through the criminal process, and the charges are accusations rather than findings of guilt. Public reporting has not established that a judge or jury has resolved the factual dispute over how Hemingway came to be inside the home.
For the Evans family, the violence also represented an abrupt reversal of the role Idris Evans held in everyday life. At UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, he worked with critically ill children and families in moments of medical emergency. He was an assistant professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and helped lead the hospital’s pediatric critical-care transport program, which handles the movement of seriously ill children requiring specialized care. Former patients and medical colleagues later described a doctor who was calm under pressure, attentive to families and willing to advocate for patients. UPMC and the university said the loss had deeply saddened their community and asked that the family’s privacy be respected.
Those professional memories became part of a broader response in Edgewood and Pittsburgh after the attack. Neighbors described the Evans family as friendly and involved in the community. Former patients told local news outlets that Idris Evans had helped guide them through frightening hospital stays. In early October, residents gathered for a community discussion and candlelight vigil, an event intended both to honor Evans and to address the shock created by a killing inside a home in the small borough. The gathering reflected a community trying to process two realities at once: a physician known for helping families had been killed, while his own family had survived a sudden attack that investigators said began as they slept.
The criminal case also expanded beyond what happened inside the Evans residence. Authorities separately charged Hemingway in an alleged sexual assault in nearby Wilkinsburg that police said occurred roughly 14 hours before the Edgewood attack. He also had a pending Pittsburgh burglary case involving an ex-partner and had been released on nonmonetary bond in that matter. Each case is legally distinct, and the allegations in them have not been proven. Later scrutiny of those cases raised questions about Hemingway’s prior contacts with police and the courts, but none of that background has produced a publicly confirmed explanation for why investigators say he entered the Evans home.
In October, a judge granted a gag order limiting statements by prosecutors, defense attorneys and others involved in the homicide case after extensive media coverage. A separate October hearing on Hemingway’s earlier burglary charge was postponed after his public defender requested a psychological evaluation. That procedural step should not be read as a diagnosis or as a ruling about his legal responsibility in the Evans case. It does, however, mean the public may receive fewer details outside formal court proceedings while several cases involving Hemingway continue through the legal system.
The most immediate outcome for the Evans family is clearer. Idris Evans died from the injuries he suffered that night. Gina Evans survived and later left the hospital. Their two children reached a neighbor’s house without being physically hurt. Police arrested Hemingway nearby and filed serious criminal charges, which remain allegations unless proved in court. Much about motive and any prior connection between the men remains publicly unresolved, but the sequence documented by investigators shows that amid a violent attack, a wounded mother’s direction helped move two children away from danger while the family fought to survive.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 8, 2026.