PITTSBURGH (AP) — The suspect in the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue expressed hatred of Jews during the rampage and told officers afterward that Jews were committing genocide and he wanted them all to die, according to charging documents made public Sunday.
Robert Gregory Bowers killed eight men and three women inside the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday during worship services before a tactical police team tracked him down and shot him, police said in an affidavit, which contained some unreported details on the shooting and the police response.
Officials released the names of all 11 victims during a news conference Sunday, all of them middle-aged or elderly. The victims included a pair of brothers and a husband and wife. The oldest was 97.
Mayor Bill Peduto called it the “darkest day of Pittsburgh’s history.”
Calls began coming in to 911 from the synagogue just before 10 a.m. Saturday, reporting “they were being attacked,” court documents said. Bowers, 46, shot one of the first two officers to respond in the hand, and the other was wounded by “shrapnel and broken glass.”
A tactical team found Bowers on the third floor, where he shot two officers multiple times, the affidavit said. One officer was described as critically wounded; the document did not describe the other officer’s condition.
Two other people in the synagogue, a man and a woman, were wounded by Bowers and were in stable condition, the document said.
Bowers, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle and three handguns and used all four weapons in the attack, told an officer while he was being treated for his injuries “that he wanted all Jews to die and also that they (Jews) were committing genocide to his people,” the affidavit said.
Bowers was charged late Saturday with 11 state counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation in what the leader of the Anti-Defamation League called the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.
Bowers was also charged Saturday in a 29-count federal criminal complaint that included charges of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs — a federal hate crime — and using a firearm to commit murder. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the charges “could lead to the death penalty.”
It wasn’t clear whether Bowers had an attorney to speak on his behalf.
The victims included Melvin Wax, who was always one of the first to arrive at synagogue and among the last to leave.
