Tempe police continue to search for the person who shot a 54-year-old man to death Wednesday night.
Officer Jeff Lane, a spokesman for the Tempe Police Department, said police have no motive in the slaying of Patrick Servino.
Lane said Servino was shot in his doorway after he answered the second of two knocks at the front door of his home at 1035 E. Carmen St.
The mother of Servino's late wife told police that Servino answered the door the first time about 6:30 p.m., had a short conversation and shut the door.
"She's in her mid-80s and she couldn't hear everything being said and she can't see very well either," Lane said Thursday.
A few moments later, someone knocked again and the mother-in-law heard multiple gunshots, Lane said.
The panicked woman ran outside with a telephone and a passerby stopped, took the phone and called 911. No one, not even the passerby, two dog-walkers or neighbors, have been able to help police, Lane said.
"They did not hear any shots or anyone speeding away and they didn't see anyone running away," Lane said. "It's almost like the suspect vanished."
Detectives are trying to determine if the same person knocked on the door both times and if that person has any connection with two recent acts of vandalism at the Servino home, Lane said.
Someone hurled a rock through a front window in May and someone spray-painted something to the effect of "drug dealers live here," on the side of the home last month.
Lane said it doesn't appear as though anyone in the Servino family has a criminal history.
"We can pretty much rule out the fact that there was any drug dealing out of that house," Lane said of the brick, ranch-style home with its neatly landscaped yard.
Servino is survived by his second wife, two grown children and an unknown number of stepchildren, Lane said. His wife was not home at the time of the shooting, Lane said.
