Eleven worshipers died and six more were wounded after a hate-filled shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018.
On the evening of the shooting and in the following days, Pittsburghers mourned the victims of the shooting, which Mayor Bill Peduto called the “darkest day in Pittsburgh’s history.” The Post-Gazette won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for our coverage of the tragedy.
Leonard Hammonds II of Penn Hills points out that a Turtle Creek police officer has his hand on his weapon during a protest, Wednesday, June 20, 2018, in East Pittsburgh. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
Antwon Rose II was shot and killed by an East Pittsburgh police officer Tuesday, June 19, as he was fleeing a traffic stop. The officer, later identified as Michael H. Rosfeld, 30, of Penn Hills, stopped the car suspected to be involved in an earlier shooting in North Braddock.
Police found guns in the car, but Antwon, a 17-year-old Woodland Hills student, was unarmed when he was shot three times in the back. The shooting garnered national attention and sparked days of protests and demonstrations across Pittsburgh.
I produced this photo story in the wake of the shooting to show how Antwon’s friends, family and community reacted.
For much of the summer of 2018, I was involved in a group of Post-Gazette reporters, photographers and editors preparing for the release of a massive grand jury report on sexual abuse and cover-up in six of Pennsylvania's Catholic dioceses. In the weeks leading up to the Aug. 14 release, I pulled photos of past bishops and of previously accused priests from the Post-Gazette's archive, preparing hundreds of photos that might be relevant to the report.
The day of the release, the P-G had photographers in Harrisburg, Erie and Pittsburgh. As reporters filed dozens of stories I updated our website photos from our photographers in the field, wires and archives.
The week after the release I compiled this gallery to take a visual look at the report and the P-G's coverage.
Two of the five Fortney sisters, who were sexually abused as children, embrace during a press conference held by Attorney General Josh Shapiro for the release of a grand jury report investigating sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s Catholic dioceses, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018, in the state Capitol building in Harrisburg. The sisters asked only to be identified by their last name. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
The formerly bustling downtown of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, sits mostly vacant on a warm afternoon in August 2018.
Small Town, Pennsylvania, was the 2018 Post-Gazette intern project that set out to explore small towns surrounding Pittsburgh. Many of the towns still face economic hardships following the region’s decades-long industrial decline. Others were in the middle of an economic boom brought by fracking while wrestling with the environmental impact.
I lead the photo production of the project, creating photo tutorials for the reporting interns, assigning a few staff photographers, photographing a few towns myself, and editing the package.