During a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania, several deaths occurred. Some local sources mention eight fatalities. The perpetrator was overpowered with the police after a gunfight.
The shooting happened in the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood, where a relatively large community of Jews lives.
The shooter, who was described by witnesses as a ‘fat white man with the beard’, would have opened the fire during a prayer service calling ‘All Jews must die’.
When called agents arrived on the spot, they too were attacked. The security forces surrounded the building. Residents were immediately advised to stay inside. Eventually, the shooter was overpowered and wounded to the hospital.
According to local news stations, eight people were killed, and three agents were injured.
The perpetrator would be a 46-year-old man who had posted antisemitic messages just before his act on social media in which he brought HIAS, and an American reproached intruder into the country that kills Americans. “I can not keep on watching my people being slaughtered. ‘I’m going in.’
US President Donald Trump immediately responded to Twitter. Later in the day, he told journalists that the shooting in Pittsburgh had nothing to do with the American weapons laws and they are not in question for him as a result of this shooting.
“If there had been an armed guard in the synagogue, the outcome would have been different,” he said. The president also pleaded for the death penalty for those who commit such crimes: “They have to pay the ultimate price,” he said about who kills believers in a house of prayer.
Vice President Mike Pence talked about an ‘attack on religious freedom’. “What happened today in Pittsburgh is not only criminal, it’s the devil,” Pence said in a speech on television. “It was an attack on innocent Americans and on our freedom of religion,” it still sounded.