CNN —
Police are looking for a man they say entered a San Francisco synagogue and fired several apparently blank rounds before running away.
The man allegedly stepped inside a synagogue in the Richmond District Wednesday evening during a gathering, then “made a verbal statement, pulled out a firearm and shot several times inside the building,” police said in a statement.
There were no injuries and no damage to the building, the statement said.
Police recovered expended shell casings at the scene that are “being investigated as possible blanks,” police said.
Investigators aren’t releasing details on what the suspect allegedly said during the incident because they are still collecting witness statements, the San Francisco Police Department told CNN.
The FBI in San Francisco said it is assisting the investigation and released photos of a man they are looking for.
Shots were fired inside the synagogue in San Francisco just days after a man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue early Sunday and amid a backdrop of recent incendiary antisemitic incidents, including tweets from Kanye West, signs over a major Los Angeles bridge and messages projected on buildings in Florida.
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which has tracked incidents of US antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault since 1979, found 2,717 incidents of antisemitism in the US in 2021, up a significant 34% from the previous year.
In San Francisco, the description of the man police are looking for matches that of a man who allegedly brandished a gun at a movie theater on the same street as the synagogue Tuesday. No one was hurt and the suspect fled on foot, police said.
“Based on these recent reports, which appear to be unrelated, the subject’s description is similar and is possibly the same individual,” the police statement said.
