A survivor of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre said Wednesday that she saw her right arm “get blown open in two places” by a gunman and cried “Mommy” after her 97-year-old mother was shot and killed next to her in the nation’s deadliest attack on Jewish people.
Andrea Wedner was expected to be the government’s last witness as prosecutors wrap up their case against Robert Bowers, who burst into the Tree of Life synagogue building with a military-style rifle and other weaponry and opened fire, shooting anyone he could find.
Bowers killed 11 worshippers and injured seven others, including five police officers, in the 2018 attack. The 50-year-old truck driver is charged with 63 criminal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and the obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death. Some of the charges carry a potential death sentence.
Wedner told jurors that Sabbath services had started five or 10 minutes earlier when she heard a crashing sound in the building's lobby, followed by gunfire. She said her mother, Rose Mallinger, asked her, “What do we do?”
Wedner said she had a “clear memory” of the gunman and his rifle.
“We were filled with terror -- it was indescribable. We thought we were going to die,” she said.
Wedner called 911 and was on the line when she and her mother were shot. She testified she checked her mother’s pulse and realized, “I knew she wouldn’t survive.” As SWAT officers entered the chapel, Wedner said, she kissed her fingers and touched them to her dead mother, cried “Mommy,” and stepped over another victim on her way out. She said she was the sole survivor in that section of the synagogue.
Her harrowing testimony capped a prosecution case in which other survivors also testified about the terror they felt that day, police officers recounted how they exchanged gunfire with Bowers and finally neutralized him, and jurors heard about Bowers' toxic online presence in which he praised Hitler, espoused white supremacy and ranted incessantly against Jews.
The defense has acknowledged that Bowers was the gunman, but suggests he acted not out of religious hatred but rather a delusional belief that Jews were enabling genocide by helping immigrants settle in the United States.
Also testifying Wednesday was Pittsburgh SWAT Officer Timothy Matson, who was critically wounded while responding to the rampage.
He told jurors that he and another officer broke down the door to the darkened room where Bowers had holed up and was immediately knocked off his feet by blasts from Bowers' gun. Matson, who stands 6 foot 4 and weighed 310 pounds at the time of the shooting, said he made his way to the stairs and was placed on a stretcher, and remembers thinking, “I must be in bad shape.”
Matson was shot seven times, including in the head, knee, shin and elbow, and has endured 25 surgeries to repair the damage, but he testified he would go through the door again.
