PITTSBURGH — After walking into Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and shooting 11 congregants, authorities say, Robert Bowers turned his weapons on police. Barricading himself…
PITTSBURGH — After walking into Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and shooting 11 congregants, authorities say, Robert Bowers turned his weapons on police. Barricading himself on an upper floor, Bowers engaged in a desperate shootout that left him and four police officers wounded.
When police finally took him into custody and his wounds were being treated, Bowers told a SWAT team officer that he “wanted all Jews to die,” according to a criminal complaint, because of his belief that Jews “were committing genocide against his people.”
A picture was beginning to emerge Sunday of Bowers, whom federal officials charged with 29 criminal counts, included obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs — a hate crime, which can carry the death penalty. He also faces state charges.
Saturday’s synagogue massacre — the worst in the Jewish community in the United States in decades — has shaken the nation. Here in Pittsburgh, it broke the heart, but not the spirit, of a vibrant Jewish community — the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, where residents grieved for the victims Sunday.
“It’s beyond terrible,” said Carl Solomon, 81, who was on his way to shul at New Light congregation Saturday morning when he saw a police officer with a rifle exit a car.
Mayor Bill Peduto called the attack the “darkest day of Pittsburgh’s history” but vowed that the city would move forward. “We know that we as a society are better than this,” he said. “We know that hatred will never win out, that those that try to divide us because of the way we pray, or where our families are from around the world, will lose.”
The dead included eight men and three women, authorities said. The oldest victim, Rose Mallinger of Squirrel Hill, was 97. Two brothers, David and Cecil Rosenthal, ages 54 and 59, were the youngest. A husband and wife, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, ages 84 and 86, of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, were also among the dead.
The suspected gunman had 21 guns registered to his name, officials said, including an AR-15-style assault rifle and three Glock handguns, which he brought to the synagogue Saturday. He had no criminal record, authorities said, and seems to have acted alone.
