Accused California synagogue shooter due in court to face hate crime charges
(Reuters) - A 19-year-old man accused of murdering one woman and wounding three other people at a California synagogue was due in a San Diego court on Tuesday to face hate crime charges.
John Earnest faces one count of murder and three counts of attempted murder, all of them with hate crime added as a special circumstance, the San Diego District Attorney’s Office said on Monday. He also faces one count of arson.
“We offer our condolences for the loss of a precious life and the violence that fell upon members of the Jewish congregation, gathered to celebrate the end of Passover,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement.
Saturday’s attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue in suburban San Diego came six months to the day after 11 worshippers were shot to death at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest attack ever on American Jewry.
Earnest, who is being held without bail, appeared to have written an online manifesto in which he also claimed responsibility for a pre-dawn arson attack at a nearby mosque last month and said he was inspired by the mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand that killed 50 people in March.
He is due in court at 1 p.m. PT (2000 GMT).
Police and the FBI were still investigating a motive for the shooting that killed Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, a congregant, and wounded three others.
A funeral was held at the synagogue on Monday for Gilbert-Kaye, one of its founding members, and she was remembered as a deeply caring member of the community.
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, one of the three people who were wounded and who lost his right index finger because of the attack, presided over the memorial service.
He described the horror of the shooting in an opinion column in the New York Times, expressing his grief and bewilderment.
He also wrote that it should have been his funeral on Monday.
“I do not know God’s plan,” he wrote. “All I can do is try to find meaning in what has happened. And to use this borrowed time to make my life matter more.”
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said Earnest had no prior criminal record. If convicted, he will face life in prison without parole or the death penalty, the district attorney’s office said.
Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Bernadette Baum
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