Pittsburgh shooting: Trump condemns 'evil' synagogue attack that killed 11 with suspect Robert Bowers facing hate crime charges

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A gunman has stormed a synagogue in Pittsburgh opening fire during Saturday services killing 11 worshippers in what Donald Trump called a “wicked” antisemitic act of “mass murder”.

Another six people were injured, two of them critically – including four police officers having exchanged fire with the shooter. Among the injured were a 61-year-old woman, a 70-year-old man and a 55-year old police officer. A suspect – later named as Robert Bowers, who is in his 40s – was arrested at the scene and also taken to hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions later announced the Justice Department will file hate crimes charges against Mr Bowers, “including charges that could lead to the death penalty".

There were a number of services underway at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighbourhood, including a baby-naming ceremony or bris, when the active shooter call was placed to police just before 10am.

“It’s a very horrific crime scene,“ Wendell Hissrich, Pittsburgh public safety director, said at the scene. “One of the worst that I’ve seen.” Law enforcement officials said that the shooter was armed with an assault weapon, and three handguns – although it was not clear all were used. Dispatchers on police radio claimed that the shooter made a number of comments during a stand-off with police about wanting to kill Jews.

Federal officials said the shooter went into the synagogue and shot the congregation before being engaged by officers on his way out. Two were shot before the gunman returned into the building to hide from approaching Swat teams. Two Swat officers were injured in a later exchange of gunfire.

The FBI are now leading the federal hate crime investigation. Mr Bowers is said to have been acting alone, with the lead FBI investigator, Bob Jones, saying that officials believed he was unknown to law enforcement before today.

The Anti-Defamation League – an anti-hate campaign group – called the shooting “likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.”

Speaking at a Future Farmers of America convention in Indianapolis, Mr Trump called the shooting a “wicked act of mass murder” that is antisemitic and “pure evil, hard to believe.The president added that antisemitism ”must be confronted anywhere and everywhere it appears".

The FBI say they will now be looking into every facet of the suspect’s life as they seek to pin down a motive. From his home, to his vehicle, to his movements in recent days. However a focus will be his social media output, with accounts under the suspect's name appearing to show a number of antisemitic rants.

A social media post just before the time of the shooting under a profile with the name Robert Bowers said a Jewish refugee organisation, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, “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".

The comment was posted on Gab, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based social networking service created as an alternative to Twitter. In a statement, Gab.com said they believed the profile belonged to Mr Bowers.

”Gab took swift and proactive action to contact law enforcement immediately,“ it said, having backed up the data and suspended the account.

Saturday’s mass shooting comes just 10 days before a bitterly fought national midterm election that has divided the country and set Americans on edge, and in a week in which more than a dozen pipe bombs were mailed to critics of Mr Trump.

Mr Trump said on his way to Indianapolis, before a later rally in Illinois: “It’s a terrible, terrible thing what’s going on with hate in our country and frankly all over the world, and something has to be done.”

The synagogue attack was at least the third major mass shooting in a house of worship in three years. A gunman killed 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, last year and a white supremacist killed nine in a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.

However Mr Trump said before his trip to Indianapolis that the shooting had “little to do” with US gun laws.

When asked by reporters whether he should revisit gun laws, Mr Trump said: “This has little to do with it. If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better”. He suggested that all houses of worship should have armed guards, although he said he “hates” to say it.

Mr Trump also called for stricter death penalty laws over mass shootings like this, and that such sentences should be carried out quicker.

Police are normally only present at the Pittsburgh synagogue for security on high holidays, Michael Eisenberg, former president of the synagogue, told local television station KDKA.

“On a day like today, the door is open, it’s a religious service, you can walk in and out,” he said.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “heartbroken and appalled” by the attack, while Turkey’s president Recep Tayipp Erdogan also sent his condolences.

“The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead,” Mr Netanyahu said. “We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh. We stand together with the American people in the face of this horrendous antisemitic brutality. And we all pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded.”

World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder called the shooting “an attack not just on the Jewish community, but on America as a whole".

Backing the president from an event in Las Vegas – where one of America’s deadliest mass shootings took place last year – Vice President Mike Pence also supported the death penalty for crimes like this and that the “evil” of antisemitism should be eradicated.

“As Las Vegas knows all too well, what happened today was not just criminal, it was evil,” Mr Pence said. ”An attack on Americans and an assault on our freedom of religion. There is no place in America for violence or anti-Semitism and this evil must end.”