“Pray for Us!”: Father Receives Daughter’s Text during Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre

00:00:09
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports, and from business to history and everything in between, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. In October of 2018, a tragedy struck a synagogue in Squirrel Hill, a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Paul Kinggor’s daughters were nearly in the line of fire. Here he is to recount that story.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: “Pray for us, I will call you later.” That was the text message that we received from our sixteen-year-old daughter at 10:16 a.m. on Saturday morning, October 27, 2018, as my wife and I drove toward Pittsburgh’s Strip District in downtown Pittsburgh. My wife called my daughter immediately. “Are you okay? Were you in an accident?” In a hushed voice, my daughter explained that she, our second daughter, and three friends, along with an adult friend of ours named Susie, were hiding in their van across the street from the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill section. They were there for a Saturday morning retreat at a house across the street. They had arrived at 9:55 a.m. They had initially stopped the van directly across from the synagogue on Shady Avenue, which would have been straight in the line of fire between the police and the shooter.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: “It’s going to be a 5898 Wilkins Avenue, Tree of Life Synagogue, 3480 Coffey.”

00:01:49
Speaker 2: They were planning to hop out and walk to the house. Mercifully, the driver, Susie, decided almost on a whim—a gut feel, she later conceded—to find a parking spot so she could walk the girls inside. Just as she moved to a spot a little further away, police cars began flying in. “Okay, initial reports of an active shooter, one down in the Tree of Life Synagogue.” As the girls struggled to assess the chaos, the police parked sideways in order to use their vehicles as shields for the shootout. The street was instantly closed off. Susie told the girls not to get out. They all sat on the floor of the van, ducked and listened and prayed and worried. We received that text message about twenty minutes later. Shortly after we talked to her daughter, Susie and the girls made a careful decision to drive a little further away. Susie did a U-turn and went down the street just enough to pull into a driveway that allowed them to put a few houses and buildings of separation between them, the synagogue, and the gunfire. After nearly an hour of chaos and confusion, the girls decided to abandon the van and make a run for it. “As we are pinned down by gunfire. He’s firing out of the front of the building with an automatic weapon.”

00:03:12
Speaker 3: “Me!”

00:03:13
Speaker 2: “I can’t get any close here, we’re under fire.” They dashed across backyards and over fences to meet a relative of Susie who lived down the street. They could hear gunfire in the background. They met Susie’s relative in his getaway car. They escaped. They got free. It was a scary day. It was also evil—an act of evil against our beloved Jewish brothers and sisters at a peaceful Saturday worship service. And while my loved ones were okay, the same cannot be said of everyone in that synagogue, eleven of whom were murdered. I’ve since returned to that spot about a half dozen times since last October 27th. In fact, I’ll be there again this Saturday with the girls. It’s never the same. Each time I go, I pause to look at the synagogue and say a prayer. I’ve since talked to other parents who had dropped off their girls at the retreat center that Saturday morning. One of them, a dad, marvels at the conversation that he and his wife had had that fateful morning. His wife typically dropped off his daughter and then sat in the car, in the drop-off lane at the Tree of Life Synagogue, where she waited and worked on her laptop for a couple of hours. On this morning, though, the dad—again, another strange gut feel, Olvey—decided that he wanted to drive his daughter to the retreat center. He wasn’t sure why, but he just tried to convince his wife to stay at home. He prevailed and talked her into it. She stayed at home for some strange reason. They made that decision. Had they not, his wife might have been one of the first ones shot that morning.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: The suspect in the shooting is in custody. We have multiple casualties inside the synagogue. We have three officers who have been shot, and at this time we have no more information because we are still clearing the building and trying to figure out if the situation is safe, if there are any more threats inside the building. So that’s all we have at this point.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: They were very lucky, and so were we. My wife and I, of course, are so grateful that our loved ones didn’t get caught in the crossfire. My kids had only one scrape—one of the girls from hopping over a fence. And yet I imagine that many of the families of the eleven dead ask why God hadn’t spared their loved ones. I agree, that’s one of those timeless questions that we all ask. It’s a question that believers of all stripes, and the Jewish people in particular, have asked since literally the time of Job. It’s a mystery why some leave this world in a violent way, seemingly prematurely, while others seem to stay longer in this valley of tears, and if and when certain people are protected and others are or aren’t. I have no answer there, though I know that God is the author of life, and God wasn’t the one pulling the trigger in that synagogue. The evil that transpired there was not an act of benevolence by a loving God. I also feel confident in saying this: the true Tree of Life is not an earthly one, but an eternal one. This world, unlike the heavenly paradise we seek, is full of sin and rot. The trees in this world decay and die. Eternal life and perfect bliss are not reachable in this world; they come in the next. Now, that might be small consolation, I understand, to the grieving and hurting loved ones of the Tree of Life Synagogue. But honestly, I think it’s truly the best that we can say.

00:06:43
Speaker 1: And we’ve been listening to Paul Kinggor, who teaches at nearby Grove City College, and by the way, that’s where our own Robbie Davis went to college. And what a story he told! Indeed, why do some leave this world prematurely at the hands of a madman and a mass murderer like this while others don’t? And I don’t think Paul could have put it better, and I don’t think there’s a better way to put it. It’s a mystery. And in the end, well, we can’t put ourselves in God’s mind, and it’s a mystery. Paul Kinggor’s story, his family’s story of a tragedy in Pennsylvania that still lives with them today and will live on with them forever. This is Our American Stories. Here are Our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love Our American Stories and America like we do, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com.