‘I’m barely breathing’: Synagogue survivor recounts terror

PITTSBURGH — A survivor of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre described Sunday how he and other terrorized worshippers concealed themselves in a supply closet as the gunman stepped over the body of a man he had just shot and killed, entered their darkened hiding spot and looked around.

“I can’t say anything, and I’m barely breathing,” recalled Barry Werber, 76, in an interview with The Associated Press. “He didn’t see us, thank God.”

The gunman, Robert Gregory Bowers, opened fire with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons during worship services inside Tree of Life Synagogue, killing eight men and three women before a tactical police team tracked him down and shot him, according to state and federal affidavits made public on Sunday. He expressed hatred of Jews during the rampage and later told police that “all these Jews need to die,” authorities said.

Six people were injured in the attack, including four officers.

Bowers targeted a building that housed three separate congregations, all of which were conducting Sabbath services when the attack began just before 10 a.m. in the tree-lined residential neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, about 10 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh and the hub of the city’s Jewish community.

Enough is enough: Fed-up Americans crave unity amid violence

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — She flipped through television channels and radio stations, scanning from conservative to liberal media, searching for any sign that the polarized nation had finally reached its tipping point.

For days, Elisa Karem Parker had been seeing updates in the news: A pipe bomb sent to liberal political donor George Soros. One delivered to CNN. More to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent political figures villainized by those on the right — a bizarre plot unfolding just ahead of the midterm election that will decide which party controls Congress.

“It’s like our country is becoming ‘The Hunger Games,’” Parker, who considers herself squarely in the middle of the political divide, told her husband and teenage son over dinner.

As authorities intercepted more than a dozen pipe bombs addressed to President Donald Trump’s most ardent critics — and then, on Saturday, as news broke of yet another mass shooting in America — political scientists and ordinary citizens observed again that rabid partisanship had devolved to the point of acts of violent extremism. Many wonder whether this latest spasm might be the moment that the nation collectively considers how poisonous the political culture has become and decides to turn the other way.

“If this isn’t it, I’d hate to think about what it will take,” said Parker as she cast her ballot in early voting last week in Louisville, Kentucky.

Analysis: Politics presses on amid election-season tragedy

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies continued. Attack ads stayed on the airwaves. Political combat largely carried on.

Amid a wave of election-season violence that left many Americans on edge, the contentious midterm campaign has barreled forward with little pause. Trump and other politicians disavowed the pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and condemned the massacre of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue this past week. But the divisiveness that has dominated the nation’s politics kept creeping back.

During a rally Saturday night, Trump asked a crowd of red-hatted supporters if it was OK for him to “tone it down, just a little bit.” When the crowd roared back with a decisive “No!” Trump replied: “I had a feeling you might say that.”

The attacks are a grim capstone to a midterm campaign that will serve as a referendum on Trump, whose unorthodox approach to the presidency is particularly glaring in times of tragedy. With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, Trump was among many politicians who largely stuck to the script, raising questions about whether Americans are becoming increasingly desensitized in the wake of tragedy.

“It feels in this moment like there’s a numbness,” said Jennifer Psaki, who served as a campaign and White House adviser to former President Barack Obama. “When there’s a tragedy, the nation is a little rudderless.”

From wire sources