Robert Bowers Wiki – Robert Bowers Biography
Robert Bowers, the gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshipers, will be sentenced to death for carrying out the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history.
Robert Bowers spewed hate towards Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three congregations had gathered to worship and study on Saturday. . Bowers, a trucker from suburban Baldwin, also injured two worshipers and five responding police officers. The same federal jury that convicted Bowers, 50, on 63 criminal counts recommended Wednesday that he be executed for an attack whose impacts continue to reverberate nearly five years later. A judge will formally impose the sentence later. The verdict came after a lengthy trial in which jurors heard in chilling detail as Bowers reloaded at least twice, stepped over the bloody bodies of his victims to search for more people to shoot, and surrendered alone. when he ran out of ammunition. At the sentencing phase, bereaved family members told jurors about the lives Bowers took, a 97-year-old woman and siblings with intellectual disabilities among them, and the unrelenting pain of losing her. Survivors testified about their own enduring pain, both physical and emotional.
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Age
Robert Bowers is 50 years old.
Robert Bowers sentenced to death in 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
Regardless, Bowers showed little reaction to the proceedings that would decide his fate, usually looking at papers or screens on the defense table. He even told a psychiatrist that he thought the trial was helping spread the anti-Semitic message about him. It was the first federal death sentence imposed during the presidency of Joe Biden, whose 2020 campaign included a promise to end capital punishment. Biden’s Justice Department has placed a moratorium on federal executions and has refused to authorize the death penalty in hundreds of new cases where it could be applied. But federal prosecutors said death was the appropriate punishment for Bowers, citing the vulnerability of his victims, mostly elderly, and his hate-based attack on a religious community. Most of the families of the victims said Bowers should die for his crimes.
Bowers’ lawyers never contested his guilt and focused their efforts on trying to save his life. They presented evidence of a horrible childhood marked by trauma and neglect. They also claimed that Bowers had a severe mental illness that had not been treated, saying that he killed out of a delusional belief that Jews were helping to cause a genocide of white people. The defense argued that her schizophrenia and brain abnormalities made Bowers more susceptible to being influenced by extremist content she encountered online. The prosecution denied that mental illness had anything to do with it, saying Bowers knew exactly what he was doing when he violated the sanctity of a place of worship by opening fire on terrified worshipers with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, firing to all who could. find.
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018
Bowers forced his way into Tree of Life on October 27, 2018, killing members of the Dor Hadash, New Light, and Tree of Life congregations, who shared the synagogue building. The victims were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; Dan Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; and Irving Younger, 69. Bowers, who exchanged fire with responding officers and was shot three times, told police at the scene that “all these Jews need to die,” according to testimony. Before the attack, he posted, liked or shared a stream of virulently anti-Semitic content on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right.
He expressed no remorse for the killings, telling mental health experts that he saw himself as a soldier in a race war, took pride in the attack and wished he had shot more people. In emotional testimony, the victims’ relatives described what Bowers took from them. “My world has collapsed,” Sharyn Stein, Dan Stein’s widow, told the jury. Survivors and others affected by the attack will have another chance to address the court, and Bowers, when the judge formally sentences him. The synagogue has been closed since the shooting. The Tree of Life congregation is working on a converted synagogue complex that would house a shrine, museum, memorial and center to combat anti-Semitism.
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