Tree of Life: A Saturday Morning in Squirrel Hill

At the entrance to a synagogue in Pittsburgh, two brothers were handing out prayer books. In the kitchen, two other men were getting breakfast ready. It was Saturday, October 27, 2018, and people had come to worship.

Before the morning was over, eleven of them would be dead. To understand how the killer was stopped, we need to follow what happened inside the building—and what the people there did to survive.

The building was known as Tree of Life, in Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood at the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community. Three congregations gathered there: Tree of Life–Or L’Simcha, New Light, and Dor Hadash. They shared a building, but held their own services. That matters in this story: when the shooting began, people were in different rooms, on different floors, with different routes out.

Cecil and David Rosenthal were welcoming people near the entrance with prayer books. Daniel Stein and Richard Gottfried were preparing food in the kitchen. These are not details of a security briefing. They are details of a normal morning, moments before it was interrupted.

Robert Bowers lived in the Pittsburgh area. People who encountered him described a man who largely kept to himself. Online, he was expressing vicious antisemitism. He had singled out HIAS, a Jewish organization that helps refugees, in a post that portrayed refugees as a threat and ended, “I’m going in.”

At his 2023 trial, an FBI agent testified that records showed Bowers last logged into his Gab account at 9:47 that morning. The post was read in court. His words help explain what investigators examined as evidence of intent; they are not a reason to give him the last word on this story.

Services were beginning around 9:45. At approximately 9:50, Bowers entered the synagogue with a rifle and three handguns and opened fire. A timeline published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency places Cecil and David Rosenthal among the first people shot. Its minute-by-minute times are partly approximate, but the sequence conveys how quickly an ordinary morning became a crisis.

The gunman moved into the area used by New Light, where Melvin Wax was leading services.

Around 9:54, the first calls reached 911. Tree of Life’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers later said that, at first, the noise sounded like a coat rack falling. Then he heard more shots and understood. He led four congregants near the front of the sanctuary through hallways toward an exit. Others were seated farther back. Myers could not reach them.

Around 9:55, Wax hid in a dark storage closet with Barry Werber, Rabbi Jonathan Pearlman, and Carol Black. After the gunfire seemed to stop, Wax opened the door. He was killed. The attacker entered the closet, searched in the darkness, and left without finding the other three.

Around 9:57, the gunman went upstairs. More worshippers were shot. By the end of the attack, eleven people from the congregations had been murdered: Cecil and David Rosenthal, Melvin Wax, Daniel Stein, Richard Gottfried, Sylvan and Bernice Simon, Jerry Rabinowitz, Joyce Fienberg, Rose Mallinger, and Irving Younger. Others were injured. They were people who had arrived for a service, not figures in his hateful claims.

Police arrived at about ten o’clock. The gunman fired at responding officers, then withdrew into the building. A SWAT team arrived roughly twelve minutes later. Officers had to move through a complicated floor plan while looking for both the attacker and people who might still be alive. They began escorting congregants out.

By about 10:47, SWAT officers encountered Bowers on an upper floor and exchanged fire. Officers later testified that he was barricaded in a classroom. After further gunfire, he agreed to come out. He told them his name and warned them about guns he was carrying; the rifle was left inside the room. The published timeline places his surrender shortly after eleven. Police did not identify him weeks later through an anonymous tip. They confronted him at the scene, and he surrendered there, wounded, after the exchange of fire.

Even then, officers had to establish what had happened. A SWAT officer testified that police worried there might be a second gunman. They asked Bowers about an accomplice, and he said he had acted alone. Officers also testified that he made antisemitic statements as he was taken into custody. Investigators examined his social-media activity and firearms. Authorities established that three congregations had been attacked in the same building.

The Justice Department’s case page records eleven worshippers killed, two congregants critically injured, twelve who escaped unharmed, and five responding officers injured. In the first days afterward, families waited for confirmation about loved ones. Funerals began, and an interfaith vigil brought people together in Pittsburgh.

The federal prosecution took years. A superseding indictment charged Bowers with sixty-three counts, including hate-crime and religious-freedom offenses. An indictment is an accusation, not a verdict. His trial began in 2023, and the federal case concluded with a sentencing hearing on August 3 of that year. He was sentenced to death on twenty-two counts.

During the trial, officers described their search and the surrender. Evidence of his antisemitic posts was presented in court. The case did not turn on a mystery about who had fired inside the synagogue: officers had encountered and arrested him there. The court proceedings addressed his crimes and their consequences.

This is an exceptionally troubling crime not only because eleven people were killed, but because of what they were doing when it happened. They had gathered openly, as neighbors and congregants, to practice their faith. Some were welcoming arrivals. Others were preparing a meal. Some survived because a rabbi found an exit, or because an attacker could not see into a dark closet. Others had no such chance.

The timeline ends with an arrest, and the federal case ends with a sentence. Neither ending restores the people who were murdered. What remains worth holding onto is the morning they came for: prayer books at the door, breakfast underway, and three congregations making a shared building a place of worship.