Married couple and brothers among Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims

Officials released the names of all 11 victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting during a news conference Sunday, all of them middle-aged or elderly. 

Among the eight men and three women killed were a married couple, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, and two brothers, Cecil and David Rosenthal.

David Rosenthal was the youngest at 54, while he eldest was 97-year-old Rose Mallinger.

The dead also included Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Irving Younger and Melvin Wax.

Fellow members of the New Light Congregation say Wax was a pillar of the congregation, filling many roles there.

Friend Myron Snider says Wax, a man in his late 80s, was a retired accountant who was unfailingly generous.

Mayor Bill Peduto called it the "darkest day of Pittsburgh's history."

The victims were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday during worship services when gunman Robert Gregory Bowers opened fire.

Bowers was armed with an AR-15 rifle and three handguns and used all four weapons in the attack.

A tactical team tracked Bowers down and shot him, police said in an affidavit.

Bowers was then arrested and treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital. While he was being treated for his injuries, Bowers told an officer, according to the police affidavit: "that he wanted all Jews to die and also that they (Jews) were committing genocide to his people".

Bowers was charged late Saturday with 11 state counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation in what the leader of the Anti-Defamation League called the deadliest attack on Jews in US history.

Bowers was also charged Saturday in a 29-count federal criminal complaint that included charges of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs — a federal hate crime — and using a firearm to commit murder.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the charges "could lead to the death penalty".