Man Gets Death for Killing Five

PITTSBURGH — A judge Thursday sentenced a man to death for fatally shooting five people and blamed the rampage in part on Internet hatemongers and lax enforcement of firearms laws.

A jury in May recommended five death penalties for Richard Baumhammers, who shot and killed his Jewish neighbor, two Asian men, an Indian man and a black man while driving through Pittsburgh suburbs looking for minorities to target.

Judge Jeffrey Manning agreed with the recommendations at Thursday’s hearing. He blamed gun laws and Internet hate sites that Baumhammers frequented, but primarily Baumhammers himself.

“They and their families will forever suffer needlessly and senselessly because you decided that their only misdeed was that they were different from you,” Manning said.

Baumhammers was sentenced additionally to at least 112 years in prison for 20 other charges, including ethnic intimidation. The death sentences were automatically appealed.

Defense attorneys argued that Baumhammers was psychotic and that his fixation on minorities resulted from delusions that he was being followed, shot with lasers and otherwise persecuted by often nameless entities.