The shooter of the synagogue was beaten with a gun and escaped with 50 bullets

SAN DIEGO – After firing at least eight shots in a California synagogue, a 19-year-old gunman stopped fumbling with his semi-automatic rifle and then escaped with 50 unused bullets, officials said on Tuesday. prosecutors.

In his first court appearance, John T. Earnest pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder in the shootout that killed one of the faithful and wounded three others at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue on the last day of Passover, a major Jewish holiday. He also pleaded not guilty to having burned a mosque last month in Escondido.

Earnest fired eight to ten shots in the synagogue near San Diego Saturday, hitting Lori Kaye, 60, twice as she was praying in the lobby, prosecutors said. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein lost an index.

Then Earnest turned to a children's room and some adults, where Almog Peretz tried to protect his niece and other children, prosecutors said. He and his niece Noya Dahan, 8, were injured by a burst of shrapnel.

It was unclear whether the weapon was stuck or was malfunctioning or if the shooter did not know how to reload.

"Something has happened to stop his use of this weapon," told reporters Summer Stephan, district attorney for San Diego.

He absconded and several people pursued him, including a detached Border Patrol officer who fired at him but missed him, hitting his car, according to authorities. Earnest called 911 after fleeing the synagogue and announced its location, prosecutors said. A police officer arrested him and arrested him without a fight.

Earnest has legally bought the gun, said Stephan, refusing to elaborate. She stated that he was wearing a tactical vest and was carrying five magazines loaded with 10 bullets each.

David Chipman, retired officer of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, suggested that the shooter may not know what he was doing and was unable to reload effectively.

"I wish it was more common – that people fail," said Chipman, senior policy analyst at the Giffords Center, an organization dedicated to fighting gun violence. "The reality is that with the current weapons, they are designed not to malfunction."

Earnest, wearing glasses and standing in a glass cubicle in front of a courthouse, showed no emotion when a prosecutor recounted Saturday's attack in Poway, in the northern suburbs of San Diego. He spoke only once, recognizing that he was waiving his right to a speedy preliminary hearing, during which prosecutors lay out their evidence.

Judge Joseph Brannigan denied bail and scheduled a hearing on July 8.

Earnest would be eligible for the death sentence or life imprisonment without parole if he was found guilty of hate crime, said Stephan, who met earlier in the day with the victim's family. . She said that she would soon decide whether to ask for the death penalty or not.

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a moratorium on executions in March while he was in office.

The prosecutor, who vowed not to identify the Earnest by name, said the defendant had expressed his "intent to harm the Jews" in an online publication. He also admitted to using gasoline to set fire to the wall of the Escondido Mosque and scribble graffiti congratulating the gunman who killed 50 people in two New Zealand mosques last month, Stephan said.

Earnest was an accomplished student, an athlete and a musician whose embrace of white supremacy and anti-Semitism stunned his family and other people closest to him. He lived with his parents and listed the deans in both semesters of last year as a nursing student at California State University in San Marcos.

Stephan said that hate crimes are often preceded by hate words.

"A whole world can enter the privacy of their room and their families do not really see it," said Stephan, refusing to discuss the details of the case.

His father, John A. Earnest, is a popular physics teacher in high school where his son attended. The parents said that their son and their five siblings had been raised in a family that "rejected hatred and taught that love should be the motive for everything we do".

"To our shame, it is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated against the Jewish people for centuries," said parents Monday in their first public comments. "Our son's actions have been informed by people we do not know and ideas we do not remember."

Earnest attended 8chan, a dark corner of the Web where dissatisfied people in mainstream social media often display extremist, racist and violent views.

"It's been a year and a half since I've been hiding, but what I've learned here is priceless – it's an honor," he wrote.

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This story has been corrected to show that the rabbi's first name was misspelled.