Neal Pilon, a 58-year-old male, was one of three fatalities in a mass shooting that unfolded in Olean, New York, on December 30, 1974. On that day, Anthony Barbaro, a 17-year-old honor student and member of the school's rifle team, initiated a deadly attack from a third-floor window of Olean High School.
Pilon, an employee of Columbia Gas, was on his coffee break when he heard sirens and drove his company truck towards the school, thinking he might be of assistance with the gas lines.
As he neared the scene, a bullet shattered his truck window. Pilon exited his vehicle and attempted to warn a responding fire truck when he was shot by Barbaro. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Olean General Hospital. Two other individuals, Earl Metcalf, a school custodian, and Carmen Wright, a 25-year-old pregnant woman, also lost their lives in the shooting.
The shooter, Anthony Barbaro, fired a total of 31 shots, killing three and wounding eleven others before being apprehended by police who used tear gas to subdue him. He was taken into custody and transferred to the Olean City Jail. The motive for the shooting was not definitively established. Roughly eleven months after his arrest, on November 1, 1975, Barbaro was found dead in his cell at the Cattaraugus County Jail, having taken his own life by hanging. In a note he left behind, he expressed self-hatred as a motivating factor for his actions.
