John Timothy Ernst, a 22-year-old man who previously confessed to the murder of Lori Gilbert, an American Jew, in a terrorist attack he carried out at a Chabad house in Pavay in 2019, today pleaded guilty to 116 federal charges against him, including setting a mosque on fire and spreading hate propaganda.
Ernest opened fire on a Chabad house in the city of Pavay as 54 members of the Jewish community prayed, and the community's rabbi, Israel Goldstein, was moderately injured and lost a finger. Eight-year-old Almog Peretz and Noya Dahan were also injured in the shooting.
Rabbi Israel Goldstein, who was wounded in the terrorist attack, AFP
The former nursing student has signed a deal in which he will plead guilty to the charges against him and will not face the death penalty, a significant possibility in cases of terrorism and hate crimes.
Now, the punishment facing Ernest is life imprisonment without the possibility of pardon and another 137 years were separated by a prison sentence, with the goal that he never went out of prison, in any scenario.
According to the counts in which the terrorist confessed, he set fire to the Der al-Arkam Mosque in the town of Escondido, California, while he knew there were people sleeping in the compound.
Seven people were present at the time of the fire, but the fire was extinguished and they came out unscathed.
The prosecutor's office revealed during Ernest's trial that the young man published a knowledge of haircuts before the attack on a Chabad house in which he admitted that "I can only kill a certain amount of Jews.
I wish I could have killed more. "