The gunman who massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018 was sentenced to death by a jury on Wednesday.
Robert Bowers, 50, was convicted of murder on June 16 after storming into sabbath services and opening fire nearly five years ago.
When U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville asked Bowers to face the jury on Wednesday as the verdict was read, the convicted murderer did so for the first time, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life Congregation, who survived the attack hiding in a bathroom, thanked the jury for the sentence.
“In the years we have spent waiting for this trial to take place, many of us have been stuck in neutral,” he wrote in a statement, per the Post-Gazette.
“It was a challenge to move forward with the looming specter of a murder trial. Now that the trial is nearly over and the jury has recommended a death sentence, it is my hope that we can begin to heal and move forward.”
A judge will impose the sentence on Thursday morning at a hearing in which several victims’ family members will address the court.
Many relatives favored the death sentence.
“We, as a persecuted people, understand when there is a time for compassion and when there is a time to stand up and say enough is enough — such violent hatred will not be tolerated on this earth,” the families of nine of the victims wrote in a letter published in November by The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.
Bowers will join a list of more than 2,000 convicts awaiting the death penalty. Most were convicted by state courts. Only 41 men face death for federal crimes, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Anna Salton Eisen, the founder of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, said she was watching the verdict. A man took four hostages in the suburban Dallas temple in January 2022, but the standoff ended after 12 hours with the suspect dead and no one else injured.
“I support the jury’s decision,” Eisen said in a statement to The New York Times that she posted on Twitter.