The scene following the deadly Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
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There were about six to eight congregants bowing their heads in the pews, along with Charny, all of them waiting solemnly for the weekly services to get started, people Charny knew well. A man appeared in the doorway. Charny doesn’t remember him saying anything. Gunshots cracked across the chamber.
“I looked up and there were all these dead bodies,” said Charny, 90, a retired psychiatrist from Squirrel Hill. “I wasn’t in the mood to stay there.”
So Charny ran away from the man, avoiding the bullets.
1.Witnesses report hearing the first shots in the lobby. Some escape through the sanctuary and the chapel.
Pervin Chapel
Room for up to 240 participants
Main
sanctuary
1,250 seating
capacity
SHADY AVE.
Ballroom
Entrance
WILKINS AVE.
Main entrance
2.Police receive the first call at 9:54 a.m. When they arrive, they confront the shooter somewhere near the entrance, and he opens fire on the officers.
3.A small SWAT team follows the shooter farther into the building and discovers the dead and injured. SWAT medics and officers extract the victims.
4.The shooter goes to the third floor, where he is found by officers. He opens fire on them, and two are wounded by several rounds. A firefight ensues, and the shooter is wounded.
Third floor
5.At some point, the shooter comes out crawling. He has an assault rifle and three handguns.
1.Witnesses report hearing the first shots in the lobby.
Some escape through the sanctuary and the chapel.
Pervin Chapel
Room for up to 240 participants
Main
sanctuary
1,250 seating
capacity
Ballroom
SHADY AVE.
Entrance
WILKINS AVE.
Main entrance
3.A small SWAT team follows the shooter farther into the building and discovers the dead and injured. SWAT medics and officers extract the victims.
2.Police receive the first call at 9:54 a.m. When they arrive, they confront the shooter somewhere near the entrance, and he opens fire on the officers.
4.The shooter goes to the third floor, where he is found by officers. He opens fire on them, and two are wounded by several rounds. A firefight ensues, and the shooter is wounded.
Third floor
5.At some point, the shooter comes out crawling. He has an assault rifle and three handguns.
1.Witnesses report hearing the first shots in the lobby. Some escape through the sanctuary and the chapel.
Pervin Chapel
Room for up to 240 participants
Main
sanctuary
1,250 seating
capacity
Ballroom
SHADY AVE.
Entrance
WILKINS AVE.
Main entrance
3.A small SWAT team follows the shooter farther into the building and discovers the dead and injured. SWAT medics and officers extract the victims.
2.Police receive the first call at 9:54 a.m. When they arrive, they confront the shooter somewhere near the entrance, and he opens fire on the officers.
4.The shooter goes to the third floor, where he is found by officers. He opens fire on them, and two are wounded by several rounds. A firefight ensues, and the shooter is wounded.
Third floor
5.At some point, the shooter comes out crawling. He has an assault rifle and three handguns.
1.Witnesses report hearing the first shots in the lobby. Some escape through the sanctuary and the chapel.
Pervin Chapel
Room for up to 240 participants
Main
sanctuary
1,250 seating
capacity
SHADY AVE.
Ballroom
Entrance
WILKINS AVE.
Main entrance
2.Police receive the first call at 9:54 a.m. When they arrive, they confront the shooter somewhere near the entrance, and he opens fire on the officers.
3.A small SWAT team follows the shooter farther into the building and discovers the dead and injured. SWAT medics and officers extract the victims.
4.The shooter goes to the third floor, where he is found by officers. He opens fire on them, and two are wounded by several rounds. A firefight ensues, and the shooter is wounded.
Third floor
5.At some point, the shooter comes out crawling. He has an assault rifle and three handguns.
5.At some point, the shooter comes out crawling. He has an assault rifle and three handguns.
1.Witnesses report hearing the first shots in the lobby. Some escape through the sanctuary and the chapel.
Pervin Chapel
Room for up to
240 participants
Main
sanctuary
SHADY AVE.
1,250 seating
capacity
Third floor
Ballroom
Entrance
Main entrance
WILKINS AVE.
4.The shooter goes to the third floor, where he is found by officers. He opens fire on them, and two are wounded by several rounds. A firefight ensues, and the shooter is wounded.
2.Police receive the first call at 9:54 a.m. When they arrive, they confront the shooter somewhere near the entrance, and he opens fire on the officers.
3.A small SWAT team follows the shooter farther into the building and discovers the dead and injured. SWAT medics and officers extract the victims.
Law enforcement officials say the man who shot at the group was Robert D. Bowers, a 46-year-old area resident who allegedly was in the middle of the deadliest attack on Jews in the nation’s history. Authorities are investigating anti-Semitic statements Bowers allegedly posted online, including a post shortly before the attack saying he was “going in.” The massacre targeted a building that houses three separate synagogues at the heart of Pittsburgh’s tightknit Jewish community.
By the time Pittsburgh police confronted the suspect, shooting and subduing him, 11 worshipers were dead.
Charny is a longtime member of the synagogue, attending services there since first moving to Pittsburgh with his family in 1955. His intimate knowledge of the building’s mazelike nooks and crannies probably saved his life. As bullets ripped through the room, Charny and two others — the rabbi and his assistant — fled for the building’s third floor.
“The building is complicated,” he explained. “It started off small but then has had a lot of additions. So there are a lot of small spaces. The three of us knew the small spaces.”
Charny found himself tucked into a storage room stuffed with cardboard boxes. The building was silent, he said. Anxious thoughts crashed inside his head: How long are we going to be here? Is he coming? How would they get out?
“We all knew leaving too soon would have been our deaths,” Charny said.
Pittsburgh police said they followed the shooter to the synagogue’s top level, where he allegedly had been stalking from room to room on the other end of the building from where Charny hid. Police said Bowers and responding officers exchanged gunfire — two officers were hit multiple times, and one was critically wounded. Bowers also was shot in the firefight. After he was taken into custody, he allegedly told a SWAT operator “that he wanted all Jews to die and also that they were committing genocide to his people.”
Charny and the two others with whom he was hiding eventually slipped out of their hiding places, emerging outside the synagogue, where they were met by police. Charny is recovering at home from his close call.
“At first I felt numb, then thankful,” he said. “I don’t need to tell you how terrible this has all been.”