Senseless violence ripped through a Pittsburgh-area community late Wednesday night, ending the lives of four women and a man for no other reason than they chose to attend a backyard cookout and party at a home on the 1300-block of Franklin Avenue.

It was around 11 p.m. Wednesday when police say they believe two men descended upon the group, which included young children, and began firing. Authorities have said one of the gunman stood in an alley behind the home so they could fire into the crowd and herd them into the sights of a second gunman, standing near a neighboring home’s back door and shooting at people with a semi-automatic weapon as they tried to flee into the home.

Witnesses, many of whom were neighbors who awoke to gunfire and screams, describe a scene from a movie: panicked children screaming for their parents and bursts of dozens of gunshots.

The shooting took the lives of Jerry M. Shelton, 35, Tina Shelton, 37, Shada Mahone, 26, Brittany Powell 27, and Chanetta Powell, 25. Chanetta Powell was pregnant with a child due to be born in May, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. Three others were shot — a woman who was treated and later released from UPMC Mercy, and two men who remain in critical condition.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has said the assault, which police believe was premeditated but defies explanation for the time being, amounts to one of the worst things he’s seen in his 18 years in office.

That it happened on a street more known for children playing than drugs or violence is a sober reminder of the perilous and inscrutable times in which we live. From Hesston, Kansas to Kalamazoo, Mich., to Charleston, S.C. — and on and on — mass shootings have erupted at holiday parties, churches, and colleges.

There is no rhyme or reason to these outbreaks of violence and suffering; there appears to be no way to stop or predict them; and there is certainly no way to truly identify with the people caught up in their aftermath until we are forced to confront them in our own community. If the violence and randomness of our times has felt distant to you here in southwestern Pennsylvania — if you dared to believe those things happened elsewhere but not here — it is now at your doorstep.

There is bound to be — and already have been — calls to action, from offering comfort to the families of the victims to stopping gun violence across our country. That has been and will continue to be a familiar routine for the people of this country whenever these shootings occur.

For now, we can only join the chorus of voices across this region offering words of comfort and hope to those whose lives were so irreparably damaged by this monstrous act.

Is that enough? Absolutely not. But it is all any of us can do.