The shooter opened fire during a baby naming ceremony at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding at least six others.<\/b>
\nThe man arrested in the mass shooting Saturday at a Pennsylvania synagogue appears to have made virulently anti-Semitic posts on a social media platform popular with far-right extremists, including one made shortly before the attack.
A law enforcement official identified the shooter to The Associated Press as Robert Bowers, 46, of Pittsburgh. A man with the same name posted on the site Gab.com on the morning of the shooting that \u201cHIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can\u2019t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I\u2019m going in.\u201d
HIAS is a Maryland-based nonprofit group that helps refugees around the world find safety and freedom. The organization says it is guided by Jewish values and history. President and CEO Mark Hetfield said he wasn\u2019t aware of the shooter\u2019s \u201cobsession with HIAS until this morning.\u201d
The shooter opened fire during a baby naming ceremony at Pittsburgh\u2019s Tree of Life Synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding at least six others including four police officers. Bowers was wounded in a shootout with police and was reported to be in custody Saturday at a nearby hospital.
President Donald Trump characterized the mass shooting as an anti-Semitic attack and law enforcement officials said they were investigating it as a hate crime.
Bowers has no apparent criminal record. He was registered in Allegany County, which includes Pittsburgh, as an unaffiliated voter. Heavily armed officers responded to an apartment building in Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon that may have been associated with Bowers.
In a statement, Gab said they suspended the alleged gunman\u2019s account Saturday morning shortly after his name was mentioned on police radio chatter. The company said it backed up the content of the account and notified the FBI.
Gab has become an alternative to Twitter for users whose racist and harassing online behavior got them banned from the mainstream platform.
The company said it disavows acts of terrorism and violence, but sees its mission as defending \u201cfree expression and individual liberty online for all people.\u201d
Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba declined to answer emailed questions posed by an AP reporter. A post made on the site\u2019s Twitter account on Saturday appeared to revel in the attention prompted by the killings, saying \u201cWe have been getting 1 million hits an hour all day.\u201d
The Associated Press reviewed an archived version of the posts made under Bowers\u2019 name. The screen name @onedingo, used on the Gab account, matches to email addresses listed for Bowers in online databases that contain the same \u201conedingo\u201d moniker.
The cover photo for Bowers\u2019 account featured the neo-Nazi symbol \u201c1488.\u201d The first two numbers refer to the white supremacist \u201c14 Words\u201d slogan, while \u201c88\u201d stands for \u201cHeil Hitler\u201d since \u201cH\u201d is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Among his recent posts, Bowers posted a photo of a fiery oven like those used in Nazi concentration camps used to cremate Jews, writing the caption \u201cMake Ovens 1488F Again.\u201d But in other posts he also featured memes containing false conspiracy theories suggesting the Holocaust \u2014 in which an estimated 6 million Jews perished \u2014 was a hoax.
Another post derided Trump for being \u201ca globalist, not a nationalist\u201d and added that \u201cthere is no #MAGA\u201d as long as there is a Jewish \u201cinfestation,\u201d using a slur for Jews. The same post also referenced QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that started on the message board 4chan and has been spread by a fringe element of the president\u2019s supporters.
Bowers also recently posted a photo of a collection of three black semi-automatic handguns he titled \u201cmy glock family,\u201d a reference to the Austrian firearms manufacturer. He also posted photos of bullet holes in person-sized targets at a firing range, touting the \u201camazing trigger\u201d on his weapon.<\/p>\n

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