Talk:Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

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A news item involving Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 27 October 2018.

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Perpetrator section

We should edit this down a bit. Mostly posting here as a reminder to myself. Prezbo (talk) 04:51, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did that. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:12, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Prezbo (talk) 12:31, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

not sure which room had the brit milah and how many people died there

This was mentioned in an alliterative article I remember from TOI back then:

"synagogue shooter turned a brit milah into a bloodbath". Times of Israel. 28 October 2018. Bowers entered a room where a brit milah (circumcision) ceremony was taking place. He rained bullets, killing 11 people, all of them adults.

It seems like this article could be misread as stating that the 11 people who were killed in total were all in the BMroom though, clearly that was not the case since some of the fatalities were outside, in the entrance way, the halls, the basement, etc.

The 'shooting' section here is long and I guess it's difficult to picture the chain of events when it's not split into subsections representing who was in what room when killed in the building. Victims does give this breakdown though:

"fouron the ground level, four in the Pervin Chapel, and three in the synagogue's basement"

Was the room Bowers entered in the middle of the ceremony on the ground level, in the Pervin Chapel, or in the basement?

The shooting section prefaces:

"Tree of Life and New Light had both begun independent Shabbat morning service in the Pervin Chapel and basement, respectively."

So: Tree of Life did Shabbat in the Pervin Chapel upstairs, New Light did Shabbat in the basement (no name for Chapel?), and no ceremony was happening on the ground level? The first of the ground-level fatalities I assume is Jerry (ran down from lobby, his partner Daniel S survived his gunshot) and Irving+Cecil (ran down from Pervin) but I'm not sure who the 4th is yet.

It does say:

Four of the worshippers left the chapel by themselves, only to be killed by Bowers outside, while four other worshippers remained in the chapel, only to be shot.

That seems like easy 4+4 math but it doesn't say the four shot in the chapel were killed: we know the Simon couple (Sylvan 1st, then Bernice later during the 911 call when Bowers returned) were both shot inside the chapel, and like Bernice, Andrea was also on the phone with 911 and received a non-fatal shot while her mom Rose received a fatal shot despite not being on the phone.

So basically of the four worshippers I casn find inside Pervin shot - 1 survived (Andrea) and 3 died (the Simons and Rose) so where does the 4th Pervin fatality come from?

Irving and Cecil started in Pervin but they had left and gone downstairs to the ground level when they were shot, so I would assume we count them as Ground fatalities not Pervin fatalities - besides if we added them both it would bring it up from 3 to 5 and 4 is what we're reporting?

Bowers goes upstairs and there is initially only 1 shot (Sylvan, his wife Bernice isn't shot and calls 911) and Bowers leaves to go downstairs to the New Light basement ceremony. On the way down he kills David and Joyce on the stairwell.

Dave and Joyce were "on the stairs leading to the lower mezzanine" and I don't know whether that's being counted as PervinC/Ground/NLbasement because it's not clear which of the 3 levels the stairs is closest to.which is presumably closer to the Pervin Chapel upstairs than the basement area where New Light was.

Bowers shot Richard and Daniel in the basement kitchen and then the 3rd basement fatality was Melvin Wax (ceremony leader hiding in closet). This is the only section of the math that's easy since it totals 3 as reported.

Then we reach the point where Bowers is leaving to go to his car but encounters cops so he goes back inside and returns upstairs to Pervin Chapel and kills Bernice and Rose in the chapel.

I think maybe this 4+4+3 math is off, oversimplified, it seems more like 3+2+2+1+3 due to the intermediate areas which are wrongly being generalized as "ground". It definitely seems off counting 4 deaths in Pervin because from my count it's 3 in Pervin (just like the 3 in the basement) and then five in the intermediate areas (3 in ground entrance: Jerry/Irving/Cecil, 2 in mezzanine stairs: David/Joyce) wouldn't this be a more accurate way to present it?

Anyway circling back, it looks like sometimes Brits happen during Shabat so it could have been either upstairs in Pervin or downstairs in New Light, it's just unclear in which room/level Bowers endangered a baby by firing into a room with a baby in it. It's fortunate the baby wasn't hit but that still goes to show how horribly dangerous he was. CanoeQuoter (talk) 23:16, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

After Columbia University what?

Under Background section: “This 2018 mass shooting took place soon after Columbia University and the Anti-Defamation League independently reported a spike in antisemitic activity online…” no information about what incident the use of “Columbia University” refers to. ~2025-41576-79 (talk) 11:33, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]