Shooting at Synagogue 11 Deaths

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suspect in custody


12 injured

Shooting at Pittsburgh Synagogue

[seemslikeadream]

10 people killed in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, official says

Pennsylvania synagogue shooting orig JG_00005612
(CNN)[Breaking news update at 3:20 p.m. ET]

Ten people were killed in Saturday's shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, according to Curt Conrad, chief of staff for Pittsburgh City Councilman Corey O'Connor.

[Original story, published at 2:59 p.m. ET]

Multiple people were killed in a shooting Saturday morning at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, according to city officials.
The suspect has been identified as Robert Bowers, 46, law enforcement officials told CNN.

The gunman made anti-Semitic statements during the shooting, a law enforcement official said.

Social media postings that are believed to have come from Bowers are a focus of the investigation, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.

Shortly before the shooting, in an account on the Gab social media platform that authorities are investigating, the suspect is believed to have posted he "can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."

The Gab account has frequent anti-Semitic postings.

Four police officers were among six people injured in the shooting, Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell D. Hissrich said.

"It's a very horrific crime scene," Hissrich said at a brief press conference. "It's one of the worst I've seen."

Live updates: Mass shooting at Pittsburgh synagogue
Latest developments


• A law enforcement source told CNN investigators believe social media postings on the Gab account belong to Bowers. The language on the account matches the suspected motivation behind the shootings, the source said.

• In a statement, Gab disavowed "all acts of terrorism and violence" and said its mission was to defend free expression and individual liberty online for all people." After being alerted to the suspect's profile on the platform, Gab said it backed up the data, suspended the account and contacted the FBI.

• The officers' injuries aren't considered life-threatening, but the other two people injured are critical, Hissrich said. Both of those victims have been taken to trauma centers. A law enforcement official earlier told CNN at least 12 people have been shot.

• The shooter was also taken to a hospital, Hissrich told reporters. Curt Conrad, chief of staff for City Councilman Corey O'Connor, previously told CNN the shooter surrendered and was taken to Mercy Hospital.

• The FBI will be the lead investigating agency, said Hissrich, who said the shooting would be prosecuted as a hate crime, "being that it is a Jewish synagogue."

• "There appears to be no active threat to the community," Hissrich said.

Police respond to the shooting Saturday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Police respond to the shooting Saturday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh police Cmdr. Jason Lando previously said officers were dispatched to the scene Saturday morning after receiving reports of active gunfire at the synagogue.

"It is imperative that the neighbors in the community surrounding the Tree of Life synagogue stay in their houses and shelter in place," Lando said. "Do not come out of your home right now. It is not safe."

Fred Rabner, a member of the synagogue, said it was a "close-knit community," and that everyone was calling around to make sure their loved ones are OK.

"Everyone is just shaken up and upset," Rabner said. "It's awful, it's just awful."

Shooting 'more devastating than originally thought,' Trump says


President Donald Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland that the shooting was a "terrible, terrible thing."
"If there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him," Trump said before boarding a flight to Indianapolis Saturday.

Trump previously said in a tweet that the shooting was "far more devastating than originally thought."

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said on Twitter that it was a "serious situation," and the Pennsylvania State Police were helping local first responders.

"This is an absolute tragedy," Wolf said in another tweet. "These senseless acts of violence are not who we are as Americans. My thoughts right now are focused on the victims, their families and making sure law enforcement has every resource they need."


Wolf is on the scene of the shooting, according to a tweet from his verified account.

Special agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are responding to the shooting, according to the ATF's Philadelphia field office.

Security had been a 'major concern' for the congregation


The Tree of Life synagogue is a Conservative Jewish congregation, according to its website. It's in Squirrel Hill, a historic Jewish neighborhood. The synagogue has a Shabbat service at 9:45 a.m. Saturdays, the website said.

Michael Eisenberg, the immediate past president of the Tree of Life congregation, said three congregations -- Tree of Life, New Light and Dor Hadash -- would have been holding simultaneous services in the building on a typical Saturday.

There would usually would be about 40 people attending the Tree of Life service in the "main part of the building," Eisenberg said. In the basement below, New Light's service would also have about 30 to 40 people. And the Dor Hadash congregation in the rabbi's study room would have about 15 people, he said.

"On a day like today, the door is open," Eisenberg told a reporter for CNN affiliate KDKA. "It's a religious service. You could walk in and out. Only on the high holidays is there a police presence at the entrance."
A SWAT police officer and other first responders respond after a gunman opened fire at the synagogue.
A SWAT police officer and other first responders respond after a gunman opened fire at the synagogue.

When he was the congregation's president, security was a "major concern," Eisenberg said.

The congregation had worked with the Department of Homeland Security to evaluate its exit routes, he said, and consulted a securities expert at the Jewish Federation about what to do in an active shooter situation.

"We were working with the other synagogues on what to do if something horrific like this happened," he said.

Tree of Life's former rabbi, Chuck Diamond, told KDKA, "Jews come late to services, so for a lot of people that's probably a good thing today."
"This is what you dread hearing," he said, adding he was concerned for those who might have arrived at the service on time, most of whom would have been older.

CNN's Keith Allen and Shimon Prokupecz contributed to this report.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/27/us/pitts ... index.html

[American Dream]

The murder of 11 people and wounding of six, allegedly by Robert Bowers, 46, came a day after the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, 56, for a mail bombing campaign that targeted liberals including George Soros. A prominent Jewish billionaire, Soros has in recent weeks been the target of heightened conspiracy-minded rhetoric from prominent Republicans including Donald Trump.

A social media post that appeared to be Bowers’ last before the attack was an attack on HIAS, a Jewish-run refugee charity, which he accused of working to “bring invaders in that kill our people”.

This belief is in keeping with white supremacist “white genocide” narratives, which hold in part that Jews are orchestrating the “demographic replacement” of white people by means of immigration.

It also resembles recent conspiracy-minded comments by mainstream Republicans about the so-called “caravan” of Honduran refugees which is currently hundreds of miles from the US southern border.

On 17 October, the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz sent out a tweet that read: “Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border @ election time. Soros? US-backed NGOs? Time to investigate the source!” While attempting to explain the tweet, he made a similar charge about Soros and the Balkans.

It was also reported last week that the Iowa congressman Steve King had aired white-nationalist style views about demographic replacement in an interview with a far-right Austrian website.

On Saturday, Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups, said Gaetz’s tweet was a “soft version” of the white genocide theory.

Beirich added that “sections of the far right, including the president, have fallen into a fever swamp” concerning Soros. Earlier this month, Trump tweeted the assertion that the financier paid activists protesting against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. During the 2016 election, his final campaign ad connected Soros and the then Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen with a supposed “globalist” establishment conspiracy.

Beirich said those who deploy such rhetoric “absolutely bear a moral responsibility” for acts of antisemitic violence such as that which took place in Pittsburgh.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chief executive, Jonathan A Greenblatt, released a statement on Saturday in which he said the shooting was “likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States”.

He added that it came at a “time when ADL has reported a historic increase in both anti-Semitic incidents and anti-Semitic online harassment”.

The statement pointed to ADL research showing large increases in antisemitic incidents and antisemitic online harassment.

Over the last two decades, white supremacists have repeatedly targeted synagogues and other Jewish institutions for vandalism and violent attacks.

On 13 April 2014, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr, a neo-Nazi, shot dead three people at a Jewish community center and a retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas.

In 2002, Jake Laskey, his brother Gabriel Laskey and two other men threw swastika-engraved rocks at Temple Beth Israel in Eugene, Oregon, during Friday prayers. In 1994, the same synagogue was the target of a drive-by shooting by a member of the neo-Nazi American Front group, which desecrated several synagogues tin the 1990s.

On 10 August 1999, Buford O Furrow Jr fired 70 shots into the Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills near Los Angeles, wounding five people.

Beirich pointed out that synagogues were firebombed during the civil rights era and have retained “an enormous symbolic importance” for white supremacists. The main intention in attacking them, she said, was to terrorize Jews.

“The thing about hitting a house of worship is that you make everyone in that community frightened,” she said. “If you’re a white supremacist, you can’t hit a better target.”

Pittsburgh shooting extends wave of conspiracy-minded rightwing violence, Jason Wilson