“We will be aggressive in our pursuit of anyone who supports the ideals proclaimed by other white supremacists and how there is a frenzy on social media platforms where hate is fueling more hate,” New York Governor Cathy Hochhol said on Saturday.
Here are other high-profile massacres in recent years that the authorities have said were fueled by hate.
Shooter ‘hates the Jewish community and the Muslim community’
He was armed with an AR-15 when he entered the busy Chabad Temple of Powai and began shooting. He also admitted setting fire to a mosque near Escondido several weeks before the shooting.
“The defendant targeted his victims because he hates the Jewish community and the Muslim community,” Randy Grossman, the US Attorney for the Southern District of California, said earlier.
“The accused has been silenced and hated. He will spend the rest of his days and die in prison while behind bars,” Grossman said.
The deadliest attack on Latinos in modern US history
11 worshipers killed in Pittsburgh synagogue
Federal prosecutors said in 2019 that they would seek the death penalty on charges that include obstruction of the free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death, use and release of a firearm to commit murder and possession of a firearm during a violent crime.
They said they were justified in demanding the death penalty because of the role that Powers’ anti-Semitic views played in the shooting.
He has pleaded not guilty and has yet to be tried.
Charleston Church becomes a target
“Mother Emmanuel directed him precisely because she was a historically African American church of significance to the people of Charleston, South Carolina and the nation,” then US Attorney Loretta Lynch said in 2015. Rove found his goals, African Americans worshiping.”
Lynch said Rove spent months planning the attack.
“He was looking for the kind of church and parish whose death would in fact make him notorious…for his racist views,” she said.
A striker spoke of a ‘holy racial war’
A veteran has opened fire at a gurdwara – or Sikh house of worship – in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding four others.
Then-Attorney General Eric Holder described the attack as an “act of terrorism, an act of hate, and a hate crime.”
According to a man who described himself as Page’s old comrade in the Army, the attacker spoke of a “racial holy war” when they served together in the 1990s.
Christopher Robillard, of Oregon, who said he lost contact with Paige, added in 2012 that when Paige rants, “it’s mostly going to be about anyone who’s not white.”
