Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a mass shooting that occurred at Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2018, while Shabbat morning services were being held. Eleven people were killed and seven were injured. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States. The sole suspect, 46-year-old Robert Gregory Bowers, was arrested and charged with 29 federal crimes and 36 state crimes. He pleaded not guilty to all 44 crimes laid against him in federal court. Using the online social network Gab, he had earlier posted anti-Semitic comments against the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in which Dor Hadash and Tree of Life was a supporting participant. Referring to Central American migrant caravans and immigrants, he posted on Gab shortly before the attack that "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." Background: Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation is a Conservative Jewish synagogue. The synagogue describes itself as a "traditional, progressive, and egalitarian congregation". It is located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1 mile east of Carnegie Mellon University and about 5 miles east of downtown Pittsburgh. The Squirrel Hill neighborhood is one of the largest predominantly Jewish neighborhoods in the United States and has historically been the center of Pittsburgh's Jewish community, with 26 percent of the city's Jewish population living in the area. Originally founded as an Orthodox Jewish congregation in 1864 in downtown Pittsburgh, Tree of Life merged in 2010 with the recently founded Congregation Or L'Simcha. The modern synagogue building, located at the intersection of Wilkins Avenue and Shady Avenue in Squirrel Hill, was built in 1953; it rents space to Dor Hadash, a Reconstructionist congregation; and New Light, another Conservative congregation. The synagogue's main sanctuary has a capacity of 1,250 people. Although Squirrel Hill has a low crime rate and is not generally regarded as racially tense, local rabbinic student Neal Rosenblum was murdered in the neighborhood in 1986 in an antisemitic hate crime. The massacre occurred just after two independent reports from Columbia University and the Anti-Defamation League saw a spike in anti-Semitic activity online, especially on the popular social networking platforms Instagram and Twitter. The immediate rise in the months of August to October was connected to the 2018 US midterm elections, with a similar rise having occurred during the 2016 US election, with the midterms being a "rallying point" for far-right extremists to organize efforts to spread antisemitism among the populace online. The intervening years between 2016 and 2018 saw rising indicators of antisemitism in American public life, including a 57% rise in antisemitic incidents in 2017 in context of rising hate crimes against other groups including Muslims and African Americans as reported by the FBI, a wave of vandalizations of hundreds of Jewish gravestones in Pennsylvania and Missouri, and a multiplication by 2 of antisemitic incidents on university campuses. In 2017, the widely publicized Charlottesville riots featured Nazi symbols, salutes, and the slogan "Blood and Soil" amid explicit and implicitly racist and antisemitic rhetoric. Online, the reports found a large proportion of the antisemitic material was spread through the medium of conspiracy theories concerning wealthy Jewish individuals including billionaire George Soros, with Columbia University's Jon Albright claiming these represented the "worst sample" of all the hate speech he had seen on Instagram. Timeline: At 9:45 a.m. three services were underway in the Tree of Life synagogue which housed three congregations. Tree of Life and New Light had both just begun separate Shabbat morning service in the Pervin Chapel and basement, respectively. Dor Hadash was near the front of the building before their 10:00 a.m. Torah study session. At 9:50 a.m. EDT, a gunman described as a "bearded heavy-set white male" entered the building, opened fire and was "shooting for about 20 minutes". He was armed with a Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle (cited by authorities as an "assault rifle" and three Glock .357 SIG semi-automatic pistols, all four of which he fired, according to authorities. Approximately 75 people were inside the building at the time. The first two shot were the Rosenthal brothers at the main entrance, after which the shooter headed downstairs to New Light. Some hearing the shots did not initially recognize what they were: upstairs Rabbi Jeffrey Myers thought it was a falling coatrack. By 9:54 a.m., police began receiving multiple calls from people barricaded in the building reporting the attack. At 9:55 a.m., the leader of New Light's services, Melvin Wax, was shot after exiting a closet, but the shooter did not notice the other three congregants who remained in the closet. Two other members of New Light (Gottfried and Stein) were killed in the basement kitchen. Dor Hadash lost one member, Jerry Rabinowitz, a physician who had left the congregation at the sound of gunshots to see if anyone had been hurt. At 9:57 a.m., the shooter left the basement and headed upstairs to the larger Tree of Life service. About 13 worshippers had gathered for the Shabbat service of the Tree of Life congregation in an upstairs chapel. Myers helped four of them evacuate the chapel through a side door, but eight of the worshippers remained behind, of whom seven were killed and one wounded by the gunman. Police sources said the shooter shouted at some point during the attack, "All Jews must die!" At 9:59 a.m., police arrived at the synagogue. The gunman fired on police from the entryway, apparently on his way out of the building, and police returned fire, causing the gunman to retreat into the building. At 10:30 a.m., tactical teams entered the building and were again fired upon by the gunman. Officers returned fire and wounded him, leading him to retreat to a room on the third floor of the synagogue. In the exchange of gunfire two SWAT members were also wounded, one critically. At 11:08 a.m., the gunman crawled out of the room in which he was hiding and surrendered. As he received medical care in police custody, he allegedly told a SWAT officer that he wanted all Jews to die, and that Jews were committing genocide against his people, according to a criminal complaint filed in Allegheny County.