‘Screw your optics, I’m going in’
Gunman kills 11 in synagogue massacre being investigated as a hate crime
Aman armed with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot worshippers during Shabbat services, killing 11 and wounding six in the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the US.
The mass shooting targeted members of a synagogue that is an anchor of Pittsburgh’s large and close-knit Jewish community, a massacre that authorities immediately labelled a hate crime as they investigated the suspect’s history of anti-Semitic online screeds.
Law enforcement officials identified the alleged shooter as Robert Bowers, 46, a Pittsburgh resident who the FBI said was not previously known to law enforcement.
A man with that name had posted anti-Semitic statements on social media before the shooting, expressing anger that a nonprofit Jewish organisation in the neighbourhood has helped refugees settle in the US. In what appeared to be his final social media post hours before the attack, the man wrote: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Bowers allegedly burst into the synagogue’s regular 9.45am service with an AR-15-style assault rifle and three handguns, authorities said. Witnesses told police he shouted antiSemitic statements and began firing. The synagogue, in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood, did not have armed security guards.
Police received calls about an active shooter at 9.54am local time and dispatched officers a minute later. Police said Bowers left the building and encountered the responding officers, shooting one before hiding in the synagogue. More officers responded and Bowers received multiple gunshot wounds. He was arrested and taken to hospital.
Four police officers were shot during the response and were in stable condition.
Federal prosecutors filed 29 criminal counts against Bowers, charging him with federal civil rights crimes. Bowers was charged with obstructing exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death, using a firearm to commit murder during a crime of violence, obstructing exercise of religious beliefs resulting in an injury to a public safety officer and using a firearm during a crime of violence.
The Pittsburgh massacre is yet another example of the homicidal fury and bigotry on the fringes of American society. It weaves together elements of many other activeshooter incidents that have horrified Americans in recent years.
Once again the gunman was armed with a semiautomatic assaultstyle weapon — as was the gunman who killed 49 people in the Orlando, Florida, Pulse nightclub in 2016. Once again the crime scene was a house of worship, a classic “soft target,” as was a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where a gunman slaughtered 26 people last November. And once again the victims were members of an ethnic or religious minority — as were the nine African American worshippers killed three years ago at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the AntiDefamation League, said: “We’ve never had an attack of such depravity where so many people were killed. . . . When you go into a synagogue, saying ‘I want to kill all the Jews,’ that’s a hate crime.”
President Donald Trump denounced the massacre and said something needs to be done about such crimes, suggesting a more frequent and speedier use of the death penalty, saying it should be “brought into vogue”.
He added: “It’s a terrible, terrible thing, what’s going on with hate in our country and frankly all over the world”.. Trump made a full-throated denunciation of anti-Semitism at a rally later in the day: “This evil antiSemitic attack is an assault on all of us. It’s an assault on humanity. It will require all of us working together to extract the hateful poison of antiSemitism from our world.”
He said the massacre could have been prevented if the synagogue had armed security guards.
Under a persistent drizzle, more than 500 people stood shoulder to shoulder during a vigil in front of Sixth Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh to express shock and anger over the mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue.
Gab, a social media platform that has attracted many far-right users, said that the company had suspended an account that matched the alleged shooter’s name, turning the messages over to the FBI. The account included repeated attacks on Jews, references to whitesupremacist and neo-Nazi symbols, and attacks on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society which works with the government to resettle refugees.