Officer testifies to grave injuries inflicted by shooter in Tree of Life trial
PITTSBURGH — Bullets don’t travel in straight lines.
They twist and turn, break apart and leave pieces behind.
That’s what was revealed in testimony on Tuesday in the trial of accused shooter Robert Bowers, who is facing 63 counts and the possibility of the death penalty in Pittsburgh’s federal court for the Oct. 27, 2018, attack on the Tree of Life synagogue. Testimony focused on the grave injuries inflicted on the victims from a high-powered rifle.
“Rifle shots to the head are devastating,” Dr. W. Ashton Ennis, a former Allegheny County forensic pathologist, said during the second week of testimony in the trial. “The bullet moves much more quickly, there’s much more energy. It’s a much more destructive wound.”
Rifles have longer barrels and use more gunpowder, said Dr. Todd Luckasevic, another forensic pathologist with the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. The rounds move far quicker and with more power than a pistol.
They can shatter 11 lives: Cecil Rosenthal; his brother, David; Wax; Bernice Simon; her husband, Sylvan; Irving Younger, Jerry Rabinowitz; Rose Mallinger; Daniel Stein; Richard Gottfried; and Joyce Fienberg. Jurors on Tuesday spent hours looking at crime scene photos showing where bullets were fired and what damage was left in their wake.
U.S. District Judge Robert Colville told the jurors they can’t let the photos shown in court influence their verdict as it must be based on factual findings, not emotions stirred by images.
Prosecutors have argued that the graphic images are necessary — that jurors need to see the damage inflicted by the shooter’s rifle and large-caliber bullets.
Those bullets leave behind other evidence. They create nicks and strike marks in wooden pews, leaving the covers of prayer books gnarled and mangled. They explode drywall just past SWAT officers’ heads, and they can render the largest SWAT officers immobile.
Bullets can leave intangible reminders that just won’t fade.
John Persin, a Pittsburgh SWAT officer, told jurors of going into the Pervin Chapel, the worship space for the Tree of Life congregation — one of the three congregations that shared the building in Squirrel Hill. He checked the slain congregants inside for signs of life to no avail.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Vasquez Schmitt asked him what he remembered about the scene. He recalled a cane hanging off the back of the pew near Bernice and Sylvan Simon. She asked what else he remembered.
He said the smell of iron from the blood. He called it a memory that’s stuck with him.
“They invade my thoughts every day — the violence, the smells, the sights,” he said.
He remembered injured survivor Andrea Wedner. He said she was under a pew, under her mother, Rose Mallinger.
“She was crying, hysterical,” he said. “She had a gunshot wound to one of her arms and was crying that her mother was dead.”
Persin had been off duty that day and planned to attend a Halloween parade with his toddler. Instead, he responded to the massacre unfolding at the Tree of Life synagogue.
He ended up on the uppermost floor of the massive synagogue — Dor Hadash and New Light also worshiped there in addition to Tree of Life — backing up fellow officers amid a gun battle with the shooter.
Among those fellow officers were SWAT members Tim Matson, Anthony Burke, Andrew Miller and Michael Saldutte. Saldutte and Matson were the first to enter the room where, unbeknownst to them, Bowers was holed up. Matson was almost immediately hit by gunfire, and Saldutte dove to the ground in front of him.
Miller tried to return fire, unable to see in the dark room now full of dust and smoke. He shot at the muzzle flashes he saw at the back of the room, he testified.
It was a gunfight.
“I could feel the drywall kicking up and hitting me in the face because he was just missing,” the officer told jurors.
It took a group effort to pull the severely injured Matson from the room.
Miller helped move the wounded officer one floor down where tactical paramedics took over. Once his helmet was taken off, Miller saw the head wound. He told jurors he was surprised that Matson was still talking — “I didn’t know how someone could survive that,” he said.
He said he kept screaming at Matson to walk, and Matson kept screaming that he was “(expletive) up.” Miller wanted him to help in his own rescue, he said, but also, selfishly, he said, “I wanted to see he was OK.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Colville excused one juror from service in the trial. The reason was not immediately made known.
The trial — which could stretch into late July — will proceed with 12 deliberating jurors and five alternates.
