A man accused of opening fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October, killing 11 people and wounding seven others, now faces additional counts that include allegations of hate crimes.
A federal grand jury Tuesday added 19 charges to the 44 counts previously levied against Robert Bowers of Baldwin, Pennsylvania.
Thirteen of the new counts against the 46-year-old Bowers are hate crime violations and the others accuse him of obstructing religious beliefs and discharging a firearm during crimes of violence.
Messages left for Bowers’ lawyers weren’t immediately returned.
Bowers had previously pleaded not guilty to counts including using a firearm to commit murder and obstruction of religious exercise resulting in death.
Prosecutors say they’ve added a wounded officer to the allegations, making a total of five. Two congregants were also injured.
This guy gives the good synagogue shooters a bad name.
Sounds like one of Doofus* White Supremacists .
Instead of piling on one guy, couldn’t we find a few of his Nazi friends and associates to share some of the charges, give a few to whoever sold him the guns.
I thought it was an unspoken agreement that we wouldn’t go overboard mentioning the name of mass killers let alone splashing huge pics of their ugly faces all over the place.
Four mentions of his name in an article that consist so six sentences seems to break that rule.
Sounds sort of like what Major League Baseball did in the 1970s or 80s to tamp down on the trend of people (Morganna King, The Kissing Bandit, random sundry White male streakers) from running on to the baseball fields to appear on TV and then on the evening news (or the nascent ESPN, with yuk yuk guys Craig Claiborne and Keith Olbermann making snide remarks and double entendres).