Moments before Robert Bowers is alleged to have entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and shot dead 11 people, he took to social media to post one last chilling message.
“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” the 46-year-old wrote apparently referring to his belief that Jewish charities were helping violent immigrants enter the US. “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Five minutes later he had joined the increasingly long list of American mass killers.
Along with the dead at the Tree of Life synagogue, six others were left seriously wounded before police managed to halt the terror and arrest Bowers – who they say was armed with an assault rifle and three handguns.
Now, investigators have turned their attention to Bower’s social media use – and the fact that, for months, he had been spewing a vitriolic stream of anti-Semitic and anti-immigration slurs.
Among his more sinister posts on the website gab.com – a social network favoured by many on the alt-right – were those calling Jews an “infestation” and others which shared Holocaust-denying messages. He appeared especially obsessed with one charity, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, blaming it for bringing “invaders in that kill our people”.
A neo-Nazi symbol accompanied his profile. “Jews are the children of Satan,” his biography read.
Gab itself has since removed the account and released a statement saying it “unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence”.
Little else appears to be known about Bowers at present.
He lived about a 25-minute drive south of the synagogue in a brick apartment complex where one neighbour described him as an “average dude”.
“The most terrifying thing is just how normal he seemed," Chris Hall told Sky News. "He kept to himself. He would a smoke a cigarette in his car, go for a drive and then be back at odd hours, TV would be on, but I couldn't really hear."
It is thought he worked as a truck driver. He is not believed to had a family or partner.
Apart from a single traffic offence dating back to 2015, he was not known to law enforcement – but he is understood to have owned, legally, some 21 different guns. In September, he posted a picture of the collection on his Gab account along with multiple clips and sights.
He now faces 29 charges in all, including 11 counts of using a firearm to commit murder and multiple counts of two hate crimes.
