Recent spate of targeted shootings evocative
Similar incidents from past 20 years recalled
Accused Atlanta massage parlor shooter Robert Aaron Long told police he killed because of a sex addiction, but authorities are still examining whether he may have also targeted his victims because they were Asian.
Mr. Long, 21, is charged with gunning down eight people, six of them Asian women, at three spas. He said his motivation was frustration over “sexual temptation” from the massage parlor workers.
But Asian American advocates, Atlanta’s mayor and even President Joe Biden have indicated racism could have played a role.
If it did, the crime would mirror other mass killings targeting specific groups across the U.S.
Four of those have occurred in the Pittsburgh region since 2000: A Black man who killed whites; a white man who gunned down minorities; a sexually frustrated loner who shot a dozen women; and an extremist accused of slaughtering Jews.
The first two, Ronald Taylor and
Richard Baumhammers, are on Pennsylvania’s death row; the third, George Sodini, killed himself at the scene; and the fourth, Robert Bowers, faces the federal death penalty if convicted.
It’s too soon to tell whether Mr. Long belongs in the same category: A killer with a hate-driven agenda.
But politicians didn’t waste time suggesting he does.
“Whatever the motivation,” Mr. Biden said, “we know this. Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning the past year feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are at stake. They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated, harassed. They’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed.”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she believes the attacks were a hate crime, either based on race or gender.
“I will be very surprised if he’s not charged with a hate crime, but I can’t speak to what prosecutors will do in that regard,” she said.
Motivation can be tough to prove, but in the cases of the four local shooters, there is little doubt that each was driven by hatred focused on race, gender or religion.
Taylor went on his rampage in Wilkinsburg in March 2000, followed by the Baumhammers killing spree across the region just two months later; Sodini killed in 2009 at a fitness club in Collier; and Bowers is accused of murdering worshippers at a Squirrel Hill synagogue, Tree of Life, in 2018.
Little seems to have changed, in Pittsburgh or elsewhere, in 20 years.
Gun control advocates still ask for restrictions, gun rights champions still resist any laws curtailing firearms, communities still convene task forces and hold vigils, and hate-filled gunmen still open fire on innocents.
Two more mass shootings, in fact, have occurred in the two weeks since the Atlanta killings, in Colorado and California, although it’s too early to pinpoint motive.
In May 2000, in the wake of the Taylor and Baumhammers shootings, then-county Executive Jim Roddey asked Dr. Cyril Wecht, the coroner at the time, to chair a task force to come up with strategies to combat violence.
“It may be impossible to prevent things like this, but we have to try,” Mr. Roddey said at the time. “If we can stop just one person from doing this, it would be worth our efforts.”
Similar emerged after the Tree of Life shootings, 18 years later.
The same scenario has played out across the U.S. after each shooting. Yet nothing seems different.
Dr. Wecht, who recalls the Baumhammers slaughter as “quite shocking,” puts much of the blame on guns in America.
“This is really a deepseated malignancy. I definitely relate this to the availability of guns,” he said last week. “We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”
He said other countries have seen mass shootings, but nowhere near the frequency as in America. After a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle killed 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, the prime minister quickly announced a temporary ban on semiautomatic weapons. The country later passed a permanent ban on militarystyle weapons.
Dr. Wecht said such quick decisions may be easier in other countries where the population is more homogeneous than in the U.S., with its “mish-mash” of ethnic groups and political divisions.
Founded in armed revolution, the U.S. also has a strong tradition of defending the Second Amendment. Supporters of gun control also point to the lobbying power of the National Rifle
Association.
The result is that extremists and the unhinged can readily arm themselves.
“Because of the availability of guns, it'seasier to act on that hatred in drastic fashion. In other countries you can’t lay your hands on guns as easily,” Dr. Wecht said. “I would ban assault weapons. There is no justification for those guns to be available.”
A second factor, he said, is the influence of social media and the general decline of civility.
“It’s contributed to the overall agitated state of American society,” he said. “I think these are all ingredients.”
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Tree of Life echoed those sentiments. He said the biggest problem is the growth of hate speech.
“I think that’s the root cause,” he said.
He equated such measures as gun bans, more robust background checks and other actions to pulling only the top, visible part of a weed as opposed to yanking it out by the roots. Violence, he said, is a symptom of decades of eroding discourse standards.
“It’s slowly evolved that way,” he said.
Some of it has been fomented by the internet and the spread of social media, with its promise of anonymity and distance, but not all. While haters may find it easy to connect with the likeminded online, he said, “the people who seek it out already have this in them.”
He said they learn it at the kitchen table from their parents. But he also challenged America’s political leaders to re-establish the proper tone for how to deal with opposing viewpoints.
“Where are the role models,” he asked, “to show us that this is how we should behave?”
It’s the same message he presented during a 2019 congressional hearing in Pittsburgh on how to stop mass shootings. Then, he called on government officials to set an example by pledging a return to “civil discourse” in debates.
At the same time, Rabbi Myers said the accessibility of guns is also an issue.
“I have to say,” he said last week, “what has Congress done?”
Coleman McDonough, the retired Allegheny County police superintendent, also addressed members of Congress at that 2019 hearing, as did Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and Scott Schubert, the Pittsburgh police chief.
While all lamented the spread of hatred online and elsewhere, they all said the most direct way to combat mass shootings is to remove the tools that turn haters into killers - guns, especially assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
“You’re never going to stop hate,” Superintendent McDonough said, but you can prevent the proliferation of military-style guns. “I don’t see a use for them in the hands of citizens.”
“It makes no sense to have war weapons on the streets,” agreed Mr. Fitzgerald.
Still, many mass killings have been carried out with handguns, not assault weapons. In one of the worst, the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech University, the gunman used two handguns.
Of the four that have occurred in Pittsburgh, only Mr. Bowers is accused of using an assault-style rifle.
But regardless of weaponry, what all had in common was rage against a target group and the willingness to act on it.
Taylor, a Black man from Wilkinsburg, shot five white men March 1, 2000, killing three of them.
He became enraged when he thought two white maintenance men, John Dewitt and John Kroll, were taking too long to fix the door on his apartment. He called Mr. Dewitt a “racist white pig,” then set fire to his couch, grabbed a gun and started shooting white people while sparing any Black people he came across.
He was convicted of killing Mr. Kroll, 55, of Cabot; Joseph Healy, 71, of Wilkinsburg; and Emil Sanielevici, 20, of Greenfield. He wounded two others, Richard Clinger, 57, of North Huntingdon, and Steve Bostard, 26, of Swissvale.
Taylor shot Mr. Kroll inside his apartment building, then walked to a Burger King and shot Mr. Healy, a priest. From there, he walked to a McDonald’s and shot Mr. Clinger, a customer, as he sat in his minivan. Taylor then entered the restaurant and shot Mr. Bostard, the manager, and Mr. Sanielevici, a University of Pittsburgh student, as he sat in his car in the drive-thru lane.
Taylor had pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. A defense psychiatrist said he thought Taylor was suffering from paranoia and schizophrenia. But the prosecution said Taylor had the capacity to know what he was doing. A jury agreed.
Taylor was sentenced to death in 2001, but no one in Pennsylvania has been executed since 1999 and Gov. Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on the death penalty in 2015.
Less than two months later, Baumhammers, a white lawyer from Mount Lebanon, launched his own killing spree against minorities.
On April 28, 2000, he killed his Jewish neighbor, Anita Gordon, 63; Thao Pham, 27, of Castle Shannon; Ji-Ye Sun, 34, of Churchill; Anil Thakur, 31, of India; and Garry Lee, 22, of Aliquippa. Another victim, Sandeep Patel, 32, of Ross, died seven years later.
Baumhammers shot Ms. Gordon first and set fire to her house, then drove to Scott, where he walked into the India Grocer and shot Mr. Thakur, a native of India, as he picked up groceries.
Baumhammers also shot Sandeep Patel, an India native whose sister owned the market, and paralyzed him. He died in 2007.
Baumhammers next drove to Robinson, where he entered a Chinese restaurant and shot Mr. Sun, the manager, and Mr. Pham, a cook, in front of customers.
Finally, Baumhammers drove to a martial arts school in Center Township, Beaver County, where he killed Mr. Lee, an African American who was training there.
Baumhammers’ lawyers argued at his trial that he did not have the mental capacity to know right from wrong. The prosecution said he was not insane but a racist who regarded Adolf Hitler and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as heroes. Baumhammers was convicted and sentenced to death.
The next mass targeted shooting came Aug. 4, 2009, when systems analyst George Sodini, 48, of Scott, walked into an LA Fitness center in Collier, placed a duffel bag on the floor, turned off the lights and opened fire on a women’s aerobics class.
He shot a dozen women, killing three --- Heidi Overmier, 46, of Collier; Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Green Tree; and Jody Billingsley, 38, of Mount Lebanon. He then shot himself.
Sodini left behind a journal ranting about his lack of success with women and a desire for revenge for years of sexual rejection.
The most recent mass killing represents the worst massacre of Jews in U.S. history. Bowers is accused of opening fire on the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Oct. 27, 2018, killing 11 worshippers. He is awaiting trial in federal court.
Prosecutors have accused him of hate crimes. If he is convicted he faces the death penalty, although it’s unclear how the change in administration may impact the case.
After a 17-year hiatus in federal executions, the Justice Department under Donald Trump resumed them.
But Mr. Biden has said he opposes the federal death penalty.