Armed with an assault rifle and at least three handguns, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning, killing at least 11 people and wounding six others, city officials said. President Trump described the shooting as a “wicked act of mass murder” that was “pure evil.”
The suspect, identified by law enforcement officials as Robert D. Bowers, 46, surrendered to the police after barricading himself inside a third-floor office of the synagogue, the Tree of Life Congregation in eastern Pittsburgh. Four police officers were among the wounded, the authorities said.
“It’s a very horrific crime scene,” said Wendell D. Hissrich, Pittsburgh’s public safety director, adding that federal authorities were investigating the mass shooting as a hate crime. “It’s one of the worst that I’ve seen, and I’ve been on some plane crashes. It’s very bad.”
Saturday’s mass shooting came just 10 days before a bitterly fought national midterm election that has divided the country and set Americans on edge, and in a week in which more than a dozen pipe bombs were mailed to critics of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump later addressed reporters at Joint Base Andrews, saying “It’s a terrible, terrible thing what’s going on with hate in our country and frankly all over the world, and something has to be done.”
“The results are very devastating,” he said.
It was at least the third mass shooting in a house of worship in three years, and left Americans feeling unmoored in what has been a vitriolic political season. A gunman killed 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., last year and a white supremacist killed nine in a church in Charleston, S.C. in 2015.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Saturday’s attack was among the deadliest against the Jewish community in the United States.
Pittsburgh residents embraced near Tree of Life Congregation after the shooting.CreditAndrew Stein/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Associated Press
“I’m afraid to say that we may be at the beginning of what has happened to Europe, the consistent anti-Semitic attacks,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of Simon Wiesenthal Center, who prayed at Mr. Trump’s inauguration. He spoke in a phone interview from Austria, where he was visiting the Mauthausen concentration camp.
“If it is not nipped in the bud,” he continued, “I am afraid the worst is yet to come.”
Anti-Semitism appeared to run deep for Mr. Bowers. Before it was deleted Saturday morning, a social media account believed to belong to him was filled with anti-Jewish slurs and references to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
In January, an account under his name was created on Gab, a social network that bills itself as a free speech haven. The app, which grew out of claims of anti-conservative bias by Facebook and Twitter, is a popular gathering place for alt-right activists and white nationalists whose views are unwelcome on other social media platforms. Early members included the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website.
Several weeks ago, Mr. Bowers’s account posted a link to the website of HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit organization, which was planning a shabbat ceremony for refugees in locations around the country. The caption read: “Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?”
And hours before the gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue, the account posted again: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
HIAS said in a statement on Saturday: “There are no words to express how devastated we are by the events in Pittsburgh this morning.”
Shortly after Mr. Bowers was named the suspect in the shooting, Gab confirmed that the name on the account, which was verified, matched that of the suspect. The company archived the account before taking it offline, and released a statement saying it was cooperating with law enforcement.
“Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence,” the statement read.
At Joint Base Andrews, Mr. Trump said that if the temple “had some kind of protection” that “it could have been a much different situation.”
The Tree of Life Congregation dates back to 1864, and was originally in downtown Pittsburgh, said Alvin K. Berkun, a former rabbi at Tree of Life and now rabbi emeritus, who stayed home from services on Saturday to tend to his sick wife.
It moved to the current site, in the leafy neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in 1952, where it now takes up most of a corner block.
“Squirrel Hill is really an amazing safe community,” he said. It is the heart of Jewish Pittsburgh with kosher restaurants and bakeries and a Jewish Community Center. “I lived for a while in Israel and I know what security can mean, but the truth is the two safest neighborhoods I know are Squirrel Hill and Jerusalem. I’ve lived in both.”
On the high holidays, when the sanctuary comes close to reaching its capacity of 1,450 congregants, there are security officers. But Saturday morning, he said, when there would be around 75 people, “everything would have been wide open.”
In recent years, the congregation size had dwindled and so now three congregations meet on Saturday morning, in three different parts of the synagogue. “It’s a very vibrant place on Saturday mornings,” he said.
Rabbi Berkun had heard that the gunman had barricaded himself at one point in his old study. Still, threats were something he had never really thought about, not here. His son, also a rabbi, dealt with threats a few years ago at his synagogue, but law enforcement got involved and no one was hurt.
His son’s synagogue is in Aventura, Fla., the hometown of a man who was arrested Friday for mailing pipe bombs to leading Democrats and Trump critics.
In a statement, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania said “these senseless acts of violence are not who we are as Americans.”
“We must all pray and hope for no more loss of life,” he said. “But we have been saying ‘this one is too many’ for far too long. Dangerous weapons are putting our citizens in harm’s way.”
About 26 percent of the Pittsburgh area’s Jewish households are in Squirrel Hill, while another 31 percent of Jewish households are largely located in neighborhoods around there, Brandeis University researchers reported in a 2017 study.
About 48 percent of Jewish children in greater Pittsburgh live in Squirrel Hill, according to the study, which was carried out on behalf of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
Shortly before 11 a.m., residents near the synagogue could still hear loud pops of gunfire. The authorities told residents to stay inside.
Ben Opie, 55, who can see the synagogue from his backyard, said his wife was about to leave the house on Saturday morning to do some volunteer work when SWAT officers approached their home and said there was an active shooter in the synagogue.
“They chased my wife inside,” he said. “They just said get in the house.” (The New York Times)
