the jewish community a little while ago. take a listen to what the president of door had ash, one of the congregations who was impacted that day back in 2018, take a listen to what she had to say. i am feeling a sense of relief. that after four and a half years, the world has heard again about the horrific acts of october 27th, 2018. and the shooter has been held accountable for those awful acts. reporter: so, obviously a tremendous amount of relief from the jewish community here in pittsburgh and others as well. but there is some mixed emotion because this death penalty phase does loom large and we re going to hear likely more gut-wrenching testimony over the next few weeks. it is difficult but this community is ready for that. and i ll say that death penalty phase will start on june 26th. alex? and the head of the anti-defamation league telling cnn that in the past decade anti-semitic incidents have gone
as it went through these past three weeks of testimony. part of the reason, the way, i should say, they did that, by playing 911 calls. one in particular stands out. from bernice simon. one of the victims of this shooting. she and her husband sylvan were inside the sin going sitting in their pew. shooting started. bernice took a prayer shawl and held it to her husband s leg to stop his bleeding and was on the phone with 911 dispatcher saying we re being attacked, being attacked. i m scared to death. then you hear gunshots and silence on that line. bernice ultimately was killed in that attack. now, i should say hearing more from jewish community leaders. in the past few minutes, some community leaders from specific congregations gave remarks. a general sense of relief, make no mistake. as you mentioned, now we re going to the death penalty phase of the trial. that will be more difficult as
well. it will be gut-wrenches, one representative said, because hearing more victim impact states and more testimony. i want to read a news statement actually just got from rabbi of the tree of life that day, survived the shooting. rabbi jeffrey meyers who wrote i m grateful to god for getting us to this day and thankful for the law enforcement who ran into danger to rescue me and the u.s. attorney who stood up in court to defend my trite play. i m focused on being with mying on gcongregation and praying an sings praise to god. shabbat is today and one more thing about that. a lot of the community leaders here, they emphasized that if nothing else, today gave relief, because it proved that a jury of his peers said that robert bowers carried out this attack specifically because these congregants were jewish. the death penalty phase starts june 26th.
conviction be in the deadliest attack against jewish people in the united states. 11 people killed because of their fake. the faith. a jury in pennsylvania convicted robert bowers on all 63 charges. more than 20 of them were capital offenses. for his shooting rampage inside the tree of life synagogue in 2018. six others wounded including four officers who responded to the scene. the 50-year-old mass murderer will enter the death penalty phase of his trial, set to begin later this month. take you live outside the courtroom with danny freeman covering this from pittsburgh. danny, tell us what it was like in the courtroom when this verdict was read? reporter: well, frankly, the best way to put it, so silent you truly could hear a pin drop when the judge was reading off those charges. our reporter was in the croom as
all over the world. and you can see this image of a bullet through it. and rabbi of the tree of life said that he wanted to preserve that so that there was a preservation of a witness to the horror of that day. now, the next step is the death penalty phase. the jury is called back on june 26th. brianna? danny, thank you. we will be looking to see. obviously, this is not over. i want to bring in dave aronberg now. he is the state attorney for palm beach county, florida. the defense here presenting no witnesses. the jury deliberating for just five hours before finding robert bowers guilty here, dave, on all charges. i know you ve been following this very closely. is this what you expected? it was, brianna. the defense did not contest that he was the one who committed this heinous act. they were just saying that he was not motivated by prejudice. he was motivated by dislike of immigrants and thought the people inside the synagogue were helping immigrants. but that made no sense becaus