Eleven people were dead after a shooting Saturday morning at a Pittsburgh synagogue, and six were injured, including four law-enforcement members, according to municipal, state and federal officials who appeared at a late-afternoon news conference. No children were among the dead.
The suspect, identified by law enforcement and local media as 46-year-old Pittsburgh resident Robert Bowers, was also injured.
Police were first called, officials said, at 9:54 a.m. on Saturday regarding an active-shooter situation at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the heavily populated residential area of Squirrel Hill and the first officers were dispatched to the synagogue a minute later. Two police officers were injured in an initial exchange with the shooter, who appeared pending further investigation to have acted alone, and two others, SWAT team members, were injured later in the incident. The suspect ultimately surrendered, officials said.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s in-charge agent, the entire deadly incident lasted 20 minutes.
Bowers, whom officials revealed at the news conference was previously unknown to law enforcement, was said to have posted numerous messages of racial hatred on social media, including one as recently as Saturday morning, the Jewish sabbath, saying, in part: “Screw your optics. I’m going in.”
CBS News reported that the shooter shouted, “All Jews must die,” during the attack. An official at the news conference said the suspect was in possession inside the synagogue of an assault rifle — local media reports described it as an AR-15–style rifle — along with three handguns.
In addition to his antisemitic postings, including some on the Gab site, reputedly a favorite of the alt-right, Bowers was said to have been critical of President Donald Trump, whom he is said to have viewed as not sufficiently ethnonationalist. “There is no #MAGA,” reads a Bowers post from this week on Gab, “as long as there is a [anti-Jewish slur] infestation.”
The attack is being investigated as a hate crime, said Gov. Tom Wolf at the news conference late Saturday. Wolf said mass shootings cannot be accepted as a standard feature of American life.
Bowers was reported to be receiving medical treatment.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Mass-shooting suspect Robert Bowers's driver's-license photograph.
Earlier Saturday, the governor described in a tweet what officials at the commonwealth had had initially stated in a tweet: “We are still learning details about the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh but it is a serious situation.”
We are still learning details about the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh but it is a serious situation. @PAStatePolice are assisting local first responders. Please stay away from the area and keep the congregants and law enforcement in your prayers.
— Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) October 27, 2018
President Donald Trump tweeted that he, too, was watching the tragic events unfold:
Watching the events unfolding in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Law enforcement on the scene. People in Squirrel Hill area should remain sheltered. Looks like multiple fatalities. Beware of active shooter. God Bless All!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2018
Wolf later tweeted that he was headed to the scene:
On my way to Pittsburgh. Headed to the scene at Tree of Life Synagogue shooting.
The suspect is in custody.
We are providing local first responders with whatever help they need.
— Governor Tom Wolf (@GovernorTomWolf) October 27, 2018
Trump added in brief comments to journalists that something “has to be done” about the atmosphere of hatred in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, suggesting, as he has in the past, that armed guards inside the synagogue may have created a different outcome in Saturday’s tragedy.
Trump: "It's just a shame. To watch this and to see this, for so many years, so much of it, is absolutely a shame."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 27, 2018
Later, after flying to Indianapolis, Trump told a Future Farmers of America annual conference that, in memory of the Pittsburgh dead, a future of justice, safety and tolerance should be fought for, before going on to talk about the trade, tax and other policies of his administration that he characterized as agriculture-related. He went on to speak disparaging of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and to lament his unlikelihood of winning a Nobel prize:
Trump seemed to be semi-arguing with his speechwriter out loud here. https://t.co/Jo9g1g7aDw
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 27, 2018
! Trump praises Norman Borlaug for his Nobel Peace Prize, then says, "They probably will never give it to me, even what I'm doing in Korea, and Idlib province, and all these places. They probably will never give it to me. You know why? Because they don't want toooo."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 27, 2018
Trump headed from the youth event in Indianapolis to a political rally in Murphysboro, Ill., on Saturday night. The White House, and Trump himself per his remarks in Indianapolis, had reportedly mulled canceling the event in light of the synagogue shooting but decided to go forward with it, saying, according to CBS, “We can’t let evil change our life and change our schedule.”
Early in the day, Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that the White House was monitoring the event, and first lady Melania Trump said, also on Twitter, that she was heartbroken over the mass shooting and that the “violence needs to stop”:
Monitoring reports of shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Praying for the fallen, the injured, all the families impacted, and our courageous first responders. God bless them all.
— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) October 27, 2018
My heart breaks over the news out of #Pittsburgh. The violence needs to stop. May God bless, guide & unite the United States of America.
— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) October 27, 2018
There were reportedly three services being held simultaneously at the synagogue, a house of worship for multiple congregations, at the time of the attack, according to reports early Saturday. One, according to reports, was a bris.
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