Trial Begins in Shooting Spree Case
The suspect in a shooting rampage in which five people died is not insane but a white supremacist who mounted the attack out of racial hatred, a prosecutor said.
Opening arguments were held in the trial of Richard Baumhammers, a 35-year-old white man accused of killing a Jewish neighbor, a man of Indian descent, two Asians and a black man. Another man of Indian descent was critically wounded.
The shootings took place during the span of an hour on April 28, 2000, in a 20-mile area in suburban Pittsburgh.
Attorneys for Baumhammers, a non-practicing immigration lawyer, maintain he was insane and is innocent of charges of homicide and ethnic intimidation, Pennsylvania’s version of a hate crime.
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