Police say they confronted shooter at Pittsburgh synagogue

(Associated Press) – Police explained how they got into a shootout with the shooter on Friday. The Worst Anti-Semitic Attack in U.S. HistoryAs he shot and incapacitated the suspect, he desperately tried to save the injured worshiper to safety.

Four days into the prosecution’s case against Robert Bowers, several police officers took the stand. Admitted to shooting 11 worshippers He was murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018, but has been trying to save his life.

Bowers surrendered after being shot three times, but when asked at the scene why he did that, he replied, “Enough is enough.” “They were killing our children,” SWAT team member Clint Timmons told jurors in federal court in Pittsburgh. “All Jews must die.”

Survivors have previously testified to this. The fear they felt that day When Bowers broke into the synagogue and shot everyone he could find.

Bowers, a 50-year-old truck driver from the Pittsburgh suburb of Baldwin, faces 63 federal charges, some of which carry the death penalty. One of the lawyers said in his opening statement that Bowers carried out the attack, but the defense said it was trying to overrule the government’s allegations that he committed a hate crime.

The SWAT team’s tactical commander, Stephen Meskan, said on Friday that the synagogue was “all shot” when he and other SWAT personnel arrived, with shattered glass everywhere and bullet holes in the building. said there was.

He said he entered past several dead people who had “clearly been shot multiple times in the face” and tried to evacuate the wounded. Seven people, including five police officers, were injured in the attack, and Meskan described how SWAT officers dragged out a police officer who had been shot several times and was badly injured.

Meskan said the scale of the shootout between Bowers and the police was “enormous”. Mr Bowers was beaten and told police he wanted to surrender, he said. Meskan told jurors he heard Bowers say he wanted all Jews dead.

Police Officer Michael Smidga, one of the first officers to arrive at the scene and one of the injured, said he was at the Tree of Life and other synagogues in the area before the Oct. 27, 2018, attack. He testified that he was regularly guarded. “Because people have a lot of hatred in their hearts,” he said.

Prosecutors said Bowers expressed his hatred of Jews online and at a synagogue on the day of the attack. The 11 worshipers he killed were members of the three congregations that used the synagogue (New Right, Dol Hadash, and Tree of Life).