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Man arrested in shooting at San Francisco Jewish center, charged with drawing imitation firearm
(JTA) — Police in San Francisco have arrested a man they believe is responsible for shooting blanks during a study session inside a Jewish center there.
The San Francisco Police Department announced an arrest early Saturday in the incident, which took place on Wednesday but was not reported to authorities until the following day. They said they had detained a man in the city’s Richmond District and uncovered evidence in a search tying him to the incident at the Schneerson Jewish Center and to a different incident in a local theater.
The police did not release the name of the man they arrested, but the San Francisco’s Sheriff’s Office shows that Dmitri Mishin, 51, was booked early Saturday morning on charges of disturbing a religious meeting and drawing or exhibiting an imitation firearm. He remained in the county jail as of Monday morning.
Mishin appears to have posted a video on social media days before the shooting showing something burning outside the Schneerson Center, according to a report in The San Francisco Standard, a local news organization; a Twitter account that appears to have been his also posted antisemitic imagery in the days before the shooting incident.
People at the Jewish center, which largely serves Russian-speaking immigrants, did not call police when the man brandished a gun during a study session. They said they thought the man was mentally ill.
“At the beginning, we weren’t sure. I wasn’t so upset,” Mattie Pil, who runs the Schneerson Center with her husband Rabbi Bentziyon Pil, told The Standard after learning about the shooter’s identity. “But now I’m getting to the point that I’m disturbed a little. It’s not a simple case like I thought.”
Mattie Pil also addressed the incident in a short video about the weekly Torah portion that she uploaded to YouTube on Friday.
The incident has returned the Pils to headlines decades after they first landed in the spotlight because of legal troubles related to nonprofits that they ran at the time. In the 1990s, The Wall Street Journal raised questions about the financial practices of the couple’s used-car donation nonprofit; Bentziyon Pil ultimately pled guilty to a financial crime after a sprawling investigation spurred by the newspaper’s reporting and was sentenced to nine months in a halfway house.
Pil and her husband are followers of the last Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, but they are not official emissaries of the Chabad movement. In fact, shortly after the Wall Street Journal expose ran, the couple received Chabad’s first-ever formal request to stop using Schneerson’s name, which they then used for an elementary school they operated. Bentziyon Pil said at the time that he did not intend to comply.
The shooting incident has also drawn attention to a different Jewish community center serving Russian-speaking immigrants that opened in San Francisco last year less than a mile from the Schneerson Center. (The reclusive founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, donated to buy the $3.5 million building.)
Rabbi Shimon Margolin, the center’s founder, issued a video statement in Russian on Facebook and sent viewers to the center’s page for more information.
“The Russian-speaking Jewish Community of SF Bay Area expresses our sympathy, support and solidarity with the community of the Schneerson Jewish Center,” the center said in a statement that outlined its own security practices, which it said had been supported by federal authorities and the local Jewish federation.
“No one can enter our community center at will — the doors are locked at all times and someone has to knock and be screened in order to enter our building,” the center wrote. “We are in the process of adding material improvements to our building that would enhance the security even further.”
As for the Schneerson Center, its website displayed a bright red banner over the weekend. It read in all capital letters, “Schneerson Center shooting update: Thanks to God, everyone is fine.”
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Rights Groups Condemn Re-Arrest of Nobel Laureate Mohammadi in Iran
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, October 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
International human rights groups have condemned the re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.
Mohammadi’s French lawyer, Chirine Ardakani, said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested after the ceremony.
Hematifar said she and Alikordi’s brother had made provocative remarks at the event and encouraged those present “to chant ‘norm‑breaking’ slogans” and disturb the peace, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The prosecutor said Mashhad’s chief of police and another officer received knife wounds when trying to manage the scene.
CALLS FOR RELEASE
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
The European Union also called for Mohammadi’s release. “The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” an EU spokesperson said on Saturday.
A video purportedly showing Mohammadi, 53, without the mandatory veil, standing on a car with a microphone and chanting “Long Live Iran” in front of a crowd, has gone viral on social media.
Ardakani said Mohammadi was beaten before her arrest.
Reporters Without Borders said four journalists and other participants were also arrested at the memorial for human rights lawyer Alikordi, who was found dead in his office on December 5.
Authorities gave the cause of his death as a heart attack, but rights groups have called for an investigation into his death.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the crowd also chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as: “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation.”
Mohammadi, who received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison, most recently from November 2021 when she was charged with “propaganda against the state,” “acting against national security,” and membership of “illegal organizations.”
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said on Saturday that the opposition’s campaign in Venezuela was akin to that taking place in Iran.
“In Oslo this week, the world honored the power of conscience. I said to the ‘citizens of the world’ that our struggle is a long march toward freedom. That march is not Venezuelan alone. It is Iranian, it is universal,” she said on X on Saturday.
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Pete Hegseth Pledges Retribution After Islamist Gunmen in Syria Kills 2 US Soldiers and Civilian, Injuring 3
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
i24 News – Two US Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an Islamic State attack on Saturday in Palmyra, Syria, where they were supporting counterterrorism operations, the Pentagon said.
Three others were wounded, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the attacker was killed by partner forces.
The Syrian Interior Ministry said that shooter in the deadly attack in Palmyra was a “member of the Syrian security forces who was influence by extremist ideology.”
President Donald Trump posted that “We mourn the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria, two soldiers, and one Civilian Interpreter. Likewise, we pray for the three injured soldiers who, it has just been confirmed, are doing well.”
“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them. The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
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Israel Says It Kills Senior Hamas Commander Raed Saed in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, December 13, 2025.REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
The Israeli military said it killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saed, one of the architects of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, in a strike on a car in Gaza City on Saturday.
It was the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a Gaza ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
In a joint statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saed was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers earlier on Saturday.
The attack on the car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
HAMAS SAYS ATTACK VIOLATES CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to reestablish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen Al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’ Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
Hamas, in a statement, condemned the attack as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but did not say whether Saed was hurt and stopped short of threatening retaliation.
The October 10 ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.