Man in San Francisco synagogue fires "possible blanks"

Police in San Francisco are investigating a shooting inside a synagogue during which the unidentified suspect may have fired blanks rather than live rounds Wednesday night in what a synagogue official called an attempt to terrorize Jewish people.

The synagogue didn't report the incident until Thursday morning. No injuries or property damage were reported.

Officers responded to a report of threats at the synagogue around 9:30 a.m. Thursday, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement early Friday.

The person who made the report described an incident around 7:20 p.m. Wednesday in which an unknown man entered the building and "shot several times," police said.

"To me, this feels like an act of terrorism. The point was to terrify the Jewish people here," Alon Chanukov, the synagogue's vice president, told KRON-TV.

KRON reported that the incident Wednesday was captured on video. A man wearing a baseball cap, jacket and sneakers enters a room with more than a dozen people at a table and makes hand gestures before taking out a gun and firing around the room. The man then waves and exits less than a minute after entering the room.

Police did not name the synagogue.

Chanukov said the witnesses didn't call police after the suspect fired the rounds believed to be blanks, but he phoned authorities Thursday morning.

"I don't think people knew what was happening. We are talking about elderly people. The youngest being 60, then 70s and 80s," Chanukov said, adding that there was a fear about retaliation from speaking out.

Police noted there was another report of a person with a gun at a theater on the same block Tuesday night. A man brandished a gun at employees and then fled on foot.

Police said the events appeared to be unrelated to the synagogue incident on Wednesday, but the similar descriptions indicate the man in each report is "possibly the same individual." Investigators were searching for the suspect on Friday.

The latest synagogue incident came as a man suspected of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the front door of a synagogue in northern New Jersey last weekend was arraigned on Thursday and amid evidence of growing antisemitism nationwide.