California shooting suspect linked to mosque arson

Woman killed and three others wounded in attack at synagogue in Poway, north of San Diego

A 19-year-old man who authorities said gave himself up to police shortly after carrying out a deadly shooting in a southern California synagogue is also under investigation for a mosque arson.

The gunman walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue late on Saturday morning, the last day of the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover, and opened fire with an assault-style rifle, killing one woman inside and wounding three others, including the rabbi, authorities said.

In an interview on Sunday with NBC’s Today programme, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein described the attack.

“I was face-to-face with this murderer, terrorist, who was holding a rifle and looking straight at me,” Rabbi Goldstein said. “As soon as he saw me, he started to shoot toward me. My fingers got blown away.”

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He said the woman killed was Lori Kaye, a founding member of the three-decade-old congregation.

“Just a kind soul,” said Rabbi Goldstein, who had surgery at the hospital. “Everyone in the community knew her.”

A woman who said she was a friend of Ms Kaye, Audrey Jacobs, wrote on Facebook that Ms Kaye left behind a husband and a 22-year-old daughter.

“Lori would have wanted all of us to stand up to hate,” Ms Jacobs wrote. “She was a warrior of love and she will be missed.”

The other two wounded were an eight-year-old Israeli girl and her uncle. Their family had moved to the US in search of a safer life after their home in Sderot on the Gaza border was hit several times by Palestinian rocket attacks.

The sheriff said they were struck by shrapnel but were “doing well” at a local hospital.

After the shooting, the suspect fled in a car, escaping an off-duty US Border Patrol agent who shot at the vehicle but missed the suspect. The suspect pulled over and surrendered to police officers a short time later.

The suspect was identified as John Earnest (19) of San Diego, the apparent author of a “manifesto” who claimed to have set a nearby mosque on fire last month and professed drawing inspiration from the gunman who killed nearly 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand.

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said police and FBI were investigating Earnest's possible involvement in the March 24th pre-dawn arson fire at the Islamic Center of Escondido, a town about 24km north of Poway. No one was hurt at the mosque fire.

Mr Gore said Earnest had no prior criminal record.

Saturday’s violence in the town of Poway, California, about 37km north of downtown San Diego, unfolded six months to the day after 11 worshippers were killed and six others wounded by a gunman who stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh yelling, “All Jews must die.”

The assailant in that massacre, said to be the deadliest attack ever against Jews on US soil, was also arrested.

Mr Gore told reporters authorities were investigating the attack as a potential hate crime.

Online screed

A rambling, violently anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim screed written by an individual calling himself John Earnest was found posted to the online text-storage site Pastebin.com and the file-storage site Mediafire.com. Links to the content on both sources were posted on the far-right internet message board 8chan.

In that letter, the author also claimed credit for the Escondido mosque arson, which was put out by people who were sleeping inside and woke up to the smell of smoke. Local media at the time reported that a message scrawled on the driveway of the mosque mentioned the New Zealand massacre.

Earnest was enrolled at California State University in San Marcos. In a statement, the university’s president said the school was “dismayed and disheartened” to learn Earnest was a student and was working with the sheriff’s department.

The synagogue on Saturday was hosting a holiday celebration that had been due to culminate in a final Passover meal that evening. Authorities said about 100 people were inside the temple, where Saturday services marking the Jewish Sabbath would have been under way or have just concluded.

US president Donald Trump and other elected officials decried the attack. Mr Trump offered his sympathies on Saturday, saying the shooting “looked like a hate crime” and calling it “hard to believe”.

“Our entire nation mourns the loss of life, prays for the wounded and stands in solitary with the Jewish community,” Mr Trump said later at a rally in Wisconsin.

“We forcefully condemn the evils of anti-Semitism and hate, which must be defeated.”

The mayor of Poway, who tweeted that he got a call from the president offering help, also denounced what he called a hate crime.

“I want you know this is not Poway,” mayor Steve Vaus said.

“We always walk with our arms around each other and we will walk through this tragedy with our arms around each other.”

Residents of Pittsburgh gathered at the Tree of Life synagogue for a vigil in the wake of the shooting.

Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto tweeted a picture of the gathering of over 100 people in a steady rain.

It was accompanied by text that read: “We gather. Again. Always. Until we drive hate speech & acts of hate out of our city, our state, our nation, our world.”

The Tree of Life released a statement, saying “We know first-hand the fear, anguish and healing process such an atrocity causes, and our hearts are with the afflicted San Diego families and their congregation.”–AP/Reuters