Ruby Edna Hesson Keenan, a 51-year-old woman, died on April 5, 1969, during a violent shooting spree on the Pennsylvania Turnpike east of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Online memorial records identify her as Ruby E. Keenan, also listed under her maiden name Hesson, and show that she lived on Princeton Avenue in Philadelphia. She was the wife of Ignatius L. Keenan and the mother of Frank M. and Paul D. Keenan.
The tragedy that took her life unfolded suddenly while she, her husband, and their son Paul were traveling together.
The man identified as the gunman was Donald Martin Lambright, also known as Donald Martin Perry, the son of entertainer Lincoln Perry, better known professionally as Stepin Fetchit. Lambright was traveling along the turnpike with his wife, Annette Lambright, when the violence began. Sources describe him as armed with an M1 carbine and a. 30-caliber Marlin 336 carbine. Over the course of the attack, he fired at people along the highway, killing multiple victims and injuring many others. Ruby and Ignatius Keenan were among those killed, while their son Paul survived with injuries.
The shooting was part of a larger rampage that left four victims dead, not including Lambright himself, and injured roughly sixteen people. In addition to Ruby and Ignatius Keenan, Annette Lambright was killed, and Vincent Saitta was critically wounded by a gunshot to the head and later died at Harrisburg Hospital on May 9, 1969. Other people reported injured included George A. Bonsell, Ernest R. Stephens, and Kim Stevens. What had begun as ordinary travel on the turnpike became a scene of panic, with passing motorists and families caught in gunfire.
Lambright was identified as the suspect and perpetrator, but there was no arrest, trial, conviction, or sentencing because he died at the scene after turning one of the rifles on himself. Authorities officially treated the case as a murder-suicide. Some later accounts noted that Lambright’s daughter questioned the official version years afterward, and his father reportedly believed his son had been set up, but the available online accounts still identify Donald Martin Lambright as the shooter responsible for Ruby Keenan’s death and the related killings.
Because Lambright died by suicide, the criminal case ended without courtroom punishment. No surviving suspect appears in the available online accounts, and no conviction or sentence is reported. Ruby Keenan’s death remains tied to the April 5, 1969 Pennsylvania Turnpike shootings, remembered as a sudden mass shooting in which she and her husband were killed while traveling with their son.
