Shabbat (Sabbath) services had just begun at the Tree of Life’s Pervin chapel on the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, when Stephen Weiss heard a metallic bang and the crash of shattering glass.
“My first thought when I heard that was that the custodian dropped a tray of glasses,” he told a federal court jury on Thursday.
Two fellow congregants, Irving Younger and Cecil Rosenthal, left to help.
Both would soon be dead.
As Rabbi Jeffrey Myers finished a religious reading, Weiss got up and walked to the chapel doorway.
It was then that he realized what was happening — someone was shooting.
“I could see shell casings bouncing on the floor,” he said. “I could see them bounce across the floor directly in front of me.”As a man familiar with guns, he knew them to be semiautomatic casings.
His peaceful place of worship was under armed assault.
He fled the chapel and headed downstairs to warn another small congregation, New Light, which was also holding services that morning.
“I was going to make sure that they left their worship space,” he said.
He eventually made it outside onto the street, where he told two responding police officers that someone was shooting inside. The officers ran to the front of the building and immediately came under fire; one officer took a round to the hand.
When the morning was done, 11 worshippers from three congregations were dead, all victims of a hate-filled killer wielding an AR-15.
Weiss’ testimony came on the third day of the federal death penalty trial of that man, Robert Bowers, a Baldwin truck driver.
His lawyers are not questioning that he did it. During testimony thus far, they aren’t even cross-examining the witnesses, allowing them to tell their stories and then politely thanking them.
Their only goal is to later in the trial convince a jury to spare Bowers’ life. The Justice Department is seeking his execution in the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind.get David Rosenthal, brother of Cecil, to go with them. Both brothers were developmentally challenged; everyone called them “the boys.” David was agitated, saying he had to call home, and wouldn’t leave. Bowers killed him.
As they made their escape, Glickman said, Charny told her that he had stood face to face with the gunman at the beginning of the attack.
She said he told her had looked into his “blue eyes” and down the barrel of his “big, long gun.” But Bowers didn’t shoot him. Charny got away.He died this year of natural causes at age 95.
“He wanted to testify,“ Glickman said.
Pittsburgh police Officer Daniel Mead took the stand in late afternoon and described how Bowers shot him in the hand through the front door of the building. He said he had just arrived with his partner, hugged the walls for protection and then rounded a corner to see the shooter “posting up on me” 4 feet away inside the building.
“I could hear the shot, and I could see the muzzle flash,” he said.
A slug hit his left wrist and came out his hand. The hand went limp.
On police radio transmissions, jurors heard him screaming and swearing that he’d been shot. They also heard him yelling at another officer to “get in the ball game,” meaning get into the action and do something.
Mead has not been able to return to work as an officer.
Prosecutor Soo Song asked him why he had tried to enter the building that day.
“It’s what we do,” he said.