“Mel Wax fell back into the room, and a short time later the door opened slightly. “My mind was clouded with panic,” said Werber, who also saw Wax get killed. Werber, 81, also testified about hiding in the closet. And she said that as she left, she quietly said goodbye to Wax as she had to step over his body to follow the officers. She said Gottfried, Wax and 71-year-old Dan Stein were “the three main pillars of our congregation.” On the morning of the attack, Gottfried and Stein were in a kitchen near the sanctuary planning a men’s group breakfast for the next day when Bowers killed them.īlack said she and fellow member Barry Werber hid in a darkened storage closet for what “felt like a year” before police rescued them. She recalled fondly how in 2017, she and her brother carried Torah scrolls as they paraded from their old synagogue, which the small congregation had sold in a downsizing, to their new location in rented space at the Tree of Life building. “I was rededicating myself to Judaism,” she said. She recalled how her brother, Gottfried, became more observant after their father’s death and how she later began attending services regularly, getting so involved that she had an adult bat mitzvah - a Jewish right of passage that she hadn’t had as a teenager. Attorney Soo Song began Wednesday’s proceedings by asking Black about her affiliation with the New Light congregation. Prosecutors, who rejected Bowers’ offer to plead guilty in exchange for removing the possibility that he could be sentenced to death, have said Bowers made incriminating statements to investigators and left an online trail of antisemitic statements that shows the attack was motivated by religious hatred.īowers, who only surrendered on the day of the attack after police shot him three times, had commented on Gab, a social media site popular with the far right, that Dor Hadash had hosted a refugee-oriented Sabbath service in conjunction with HIAS, a Jewish agency whose work includes aiding refugees.Īssistant U.S. But hoping to spare Bowers from the death penalty, Clarke questioned the hate crime counts he faces, suggesting instead that he attacked the synagogue out of an irrational belief that he needed to kill Jews to save others from a genocide that he claimed they were enabling by helping immigrants come to the U.S. That Bowers carried out the attack, which also injured seven people, isn’t in question: His lawyer Judy Clarke acknowledged as much on the trial’s first day. 27, 2018, attack, which claimed the lives of worshippers from three congregations who were using the synagogue that day: New Light, Dor Hadash and the Tree of Life. Bowers, 50, could face the death penalty if he’s convicted of some of the 63 counts he faces in the Oct.
FEAR COLUMBUS OHIO DRIVER
The testimony came in the trial of Robert Bowers, a truck driver from the Pittsburgh suburb of Baldwin.
Black didn’t learn until later that her 65-year-old brother, Richard Gottfried, was among the 11 people killed in the attack. Wax, 87, was hard of hearing and had opened the storage door, apparently believing the attack was over, she said.
… I thought by remaining calm, I would not give my position away,” she testified in the Pittsburgh federal courtroom.īlack, 71, recalled how she remained hidden even as she saw congregant Mel Wax, who had been hiding close to her, drop dead after the gunman shot him.
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