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May 5, 2000/30 Nisan 5760, Vol. 52, No.35
Rampage shakes Pitt Jews
PETER EPHROSS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - Some Jewish facilities in Pittsburgh are under increased security following last week's shooting rampage that killed five minorities, including one Jewish woman.
Police are adding patrols and keeping marked police cars parked near some Pittsburgh Jewish institutions.
"We live in an era of random risk, and I'm watching Jewish institutions take increased precautions," said Brian Schreiber, executive director of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.
On Monday, police were patrolling the parking lot of Congregation Beth El of South Hills, which was one of two synagogues shot at during the rampage. Windows were boarded, and the anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted there during the rampage was covered, according to a synagogue employee.
The tragedy is spurring calls for increased gun safety laws and passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which has been stalled in Congress.
President Clinton called for national legislation against hate crimes in an address Sunday at a fund raiser for the NAACP in Detroit.
The rampage was the second apparently racially motivated crime in the Pittsburgh area in the past two months.
In March, a black man allegedly killed three whites in the working-class suburb of Wilkinsburg.
Richard Scott Baumhammers, 34, allegedly began his spree April 28 by killing Anita Gordon, a Jewish woman who was one of his next-door neighbors and a family friend.
Gordon, a 63-year-old Pittsburgh native and married mother of three daughters, was known for her work as a volunteer at Beth El.
A standing-room-only funeral for Gordon, who had known Baumhammers since he was a young boy, was Monday, May 1.
The other four people killed that day also were minorities: an Indian man was killed at a grocery; two Asian men at a Chinese restaurant; and a black man was shot and killed at a karate school.
Baumhammers also allegedly shot through the windows of the two suburban Pittsburgh synagogues - Ahavath Achim was the other one - and spray-painted the anti-Semitic graffiti outside Beth El.
No one was hurt in the synagogue attacks.
Pennsylvania prosecutors charged Baumhammers with five counts of homicide. Baumhammers, who pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday, was also charged with seven counts of ethnic intimidation under Pennsylvania's hate crimes law.
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