EVANS CITY — Borough officials as well as neighbors of Bob Gaurrich, whose death on Friday at his repair shop on Route 68 was ruled a homicide, were shocked and saddened that such a crime could happen so close to home.

Evans City Police Chief Joe McCombs said people tend to express shock that such a brutal crime could happen so close to home after such an incident.

“But it just goes to show, at any given time or any given place, anything can happen,” McCombs said.

McCombs said his officers were never called to Gaurrich’s shop as far as he knows.

He said the only other homicide he can recall in or around Evans City is the case of Tracy McCurdy, who admitted to suffocating her baby in October 2002. McCurdy was sentenced to 16 to 60 months in state prison.

State police continue to work on the Gaurrich case. Gaurrich’s body was found face down in a pile of stone outside his repair garage about 11 p.m. Friday.

Butler County Deputy Coroner Larry Barr said an autopsy determined Gaurrich died of a single gunshot wound to the upper chest. The death was ruled a homicide, and investigators are searching for a .30-30 rifle they think was used in the crime.

Norma Rape, who lives up the street from the garage, said she never met Gaurrich, but still was shocked by the killing.

“We have accidents and other things up here, but never this,” she said.

The neighborhood is full of close-knit people who all look out for each other, Rape said, which makes a murder even more unusual in the small town.

“It makes you wonder if someone was after him,” she said.

Longtime borough councilman Karl Kennedy said he knew Gaurrich to see him because Kennedy took his car to the repair shop on North Washington Street owned by Gaurrich’s father. Kennedy said Bob Gaurrich worked at another repair shop toward Butler before opening his own shop several years ago just east of Skander Tire.

Kennedy said the tragic case could be repeated again if gun laws are overturned in favor of gun control.

“They talk about taking away my guns, but if he’d had a gun there, maybe he would be living,” he said.

Kennedy said the only other unsolved deaths he can recall in or around Evans City is the case of Shawn Baur and Scott Fosnaught, both 15, who were struck and killed on Cashdollar Road in Forward Township Road in July 2002. While two arrests for furnishing alcohol to minors were made after the boys’ deaths, the case remains unsolved.