Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: 11 killed and suspect taken into custody

Eleven people were killed and six wounded in a shooting at a
synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood of Pittsburgh on
Saturday, a city official said.

In remarks in Indianapolis, Donald Trump called the shooting at
the Tree of Life synagogue “a wicked act of mass murder” and
decried antisemitism in all forms. The FBI was investigating the
shooting as a federal hate crime.

The identities of the dead were not immediately released but
Wendell Hissrich, Pittsburgh’s public safety director, told an
afternoon news conference no children were killed. The wounded toll
did not include the suspect, he said.

The gunman was identified as Robert Bowers, a Pittsburgh
resident who is reportedly 46 years old. He was taken to hospital
in the city, police said.

The suspect appeared to have far-right views. In the immediate
aftermath of the shooting, the local CBS affiliate KDJA reported
that the suspect was “white male [with] a beard” and said he
“walked in yelling ‘All Jews must die’”. Social media accounts in
the name of Robert Bowers contained antisemitic rants.

“Today the nightmare has hit home here in the city of
Pittsburgh,” Hissrich said.

An emergency call reported the shooting at 9.54am ET and
officers were dispatched a minute later. Two officers were shot and
wounded when they arrived at the synagogue, Hissrich said.

Bob Jones, FBI special agent in charge, said the suspect was
leaving the synagogue when he was engaged by the officers, having
carried out the shootings inside. He then retreated into the
building, where two officers were injured before the suspect’s
surrender.

Jones said the suspect had an assault rifle and three handguns.
He could not confirm all were used.

Dr Dan Yealy of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center did
not divulge the identities of those wounded but did detail the
injuries they suffered. The two non-officers injured were a
61-year-old woman and a 70-year-old man, he said. The latter
casualty was in critical condition and undergoing a second
operation after suffering gunshot wounds to the torso. The four
officers all remained in hospital.

As news of the shooting spread on Saturday morning, KDKA
reported “an exchange of gunfire between the police and suspect on
the third floor”. The gunman was injured and surrendered after
negotiation, the station said.

Jeff Finkelstein, chief executive of the Jewish Federation of
Greater Pittsburgh, told reporters a little more than half of the
Jewish community in the greater Pittsburgh area lived in and around
the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Michael Eisenberg, a past president
of the Tree of Life synagogue, said there were three services in
the main building, with 30 to 40 people in two larger services and
about 15 in a smaller one. One of the services was a bris, a
circumcision ceremony involving a male infant.

“We’ve never had any threats,” Eisenberg said, adding that the
synagogue had nonetheless consulted the Department of Homeland
Security and other synagogues about precautions.

Trump left Washington for a speaking engagement and a political
rally. At Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, he expressed sympathy for
the victims of the event then unfolding in Pennsylvania. Asked if
gun laws needed to be changed to prevent such incidents, the
president said: “If they had protection inside the results would
have been far better. If they had some kind of a protection inside
the temple, maybe it would have been a much different
situation.”

Trump also said people who carried out mass shootings were
“wackos” and said he thought the death penalty should be brought
“into vogue”.

“It’s a terrible, terrible thing what’s going on with hate in
our country, frankly,” the president said, “and all over the world.
And something has to be done.”

Trump spoke the day after an avowed supporter of his policies
was arrested in Florida and charged over pipe bombs sent to
prominent Democrats and critics of the president’s policies.

At a Future Farmers of America event in Indianapolis, Trump
strongly condemned the shooting as antisemitic, an “act of pure
evil” and “a wicked act of mass murder”. The president had a
campaign rally in southern Illinois scheduled for Saturday night.
He said it would go ahead as planned.

Internationally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
expressed his sympathy while his minister of the diaspora, Naftali
Bennett, tweeted that he was “flying to Pittsburgh to be with our
sisters and brothers on their darkest hour”.

Trump’s remarks stoked debate over whether the shooting could
have been prevented. The Pennsylvania governor, Tom Wolf, called
the shooting “an absolute tragedy” and added: “We have been saying
[this one is too many] for far too long. Dangerous weapons are
putting our citizens in harm’s way. And in the aftermath of this
tragedy, we must come together and take action to prevent these
tragedies in the future. We cannot accept this violence as
normal.”

At the scene on Saturday morning, a light rain fell as officers
cordoned off the area. Chuck Diamond stood at the corner of Murray
Street and Northumberland Avenue, wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat,
doing his best to comfort shocked and grieving people. Until a year
ago, he was the rabbi at Tree of Life.

“We were lucky,” he said. “It was the beginning of services and
Jews always come late to services.”

Locally, the epithet “Squirrel Hill Jew” has long been used to
describe people from this tight-knit liberal enclave, blocks away
from Carnegie Mellon University.

“I’m sure everybody in the community feels like it’s an attack
on them,” Diamond said, adding that he had feared such an attack
for years.

“There are issues we need to address like gun control and people
need to keep this in mind when they go to the polls in November,”
he said.

Congressman Mike Doyle, who lives in nearby Forest Hills, said:
“It’s horrific. I know people that go to church there. One of my
employees got married there and her parents go there. It just makes
you numb, that’s all.”

In 2016, the Democrat helped lead a sit-in on the House floor,
calling for gun control legislation. “You know,” he said, “you have
disturbed minds and hate in hearts and guns in their hands and this
is what happens and Congress does nothing.”

A Squirrel Hill resident, a graduate student from Germany who
did not wish to be named, said it was “the second time I’ve been
near the scene of a mass shooting”. The student said she had
previously lived near the scene of the 2014 Isla Vista shooting in
California, in which six people died.

Culled from theguardian.com