The suspect, who was in custody by noon, opened fire inside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the city's Squirrel Hill neighbourhood, according to The Associated Press.
A mourning family doesn't want to meet him. Leaders of his own party declined to join him. The mayor has explicitly asked him not to come.
And yet US President Donald Trump plans to visit the grief-stricken city of Pittsburgh today, amid accusations that he and his administration continue tofuel the anti-Semitism that inspired Sunday's massacre inside a synagogue.
The President and first lady Melania Trump are scheduled to arrive several hours after the first funerals are held for the 11 victims of the mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue.
More than 1200 people have so far signed up for a demonstration at the same time - declaring Trump "unwelcome in our city and in our country."
Congressional leaders from both parties - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, (R), House Speaker Paul Ryan, (R), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, (D), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, (D) - have all declined invitations to join Trump on his visit, according to three officials familiar with matter. (McConnell's office said the Kentucky senator "has events in the state and was unable to attend.")
Trump offered to visit the family of Daniel Stein, a 71-year-old who had just become a grandfather when he was gunned down at Tree of Life. Stein's nephew, Stephen Halle, said the family declined. It was in part because of the comments Trump made in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when he suggested the synagogue should have had an armed guard.
"Everybody feels that they were inappropriate," Halle said of Trump's remarks about security. "He was blaming the community."
Stein's funeral was one of four scheduled for today. In the late morning, hundreds of mourners lined up to see the coffins of Cecil and David Rosenthal - two brothers gunned down at Tree of Life three days earlier, as they celebrated the Jewish Sabbath with Stein and the other victims.
The city's Democratic Mayor, Bill Peduto, had asked the White House to consider "the will of the families" before visiting - as well as the resources of a city straining under the deadliest attack on Jews in US history.
"All attention should be on the victims," Peduto said yesterday. "We do not have enough public safety officials to provide enough protection at the funerals and to be able at the same time draw attention to a potential presidential visit."
US President Donald Trump says he just wants to pay his respects.
After Trump confirmed his visit anyway, the mayor's office said Peduto would not appear with the President. Neither will Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.
Trump has not announced whether he will visit Squirrel Hill - the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood where the synagogue is located and many victims lived. Tree of Life has been closed since the rampage, which was allegedly carried out by a man who had ranted online that Jews were bringing "invaders in that kill our people."
The suspect, Robert Bowers, was referring to a Jewish group that worked with refugees in the United States. Trump has repeatedly referred to migrants as dangerous invaders, and did so again in a tweet yesterday. The President has also repeatedly denigrated "globalists" despite warnings from Jewish groups that the word is code for Jews in anti-Semitic circles, and appeared in one of Bowers's online rants.
Trump's supporters, however, paint him as a friend to Jews, pointing out his support for the Israeli Government and his strong condemnations of "evil" anti-Semitism.
"I'm just going to pay my respects," Trump said in a Fox News interview. "I'm also going to the hospital to see the officers and some of the people that were so badly hurt. So, and I really look forward to going. I would have done it even sooner, but I didn't want to disrupt any more than they already had disruption."
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who has called out "hate" in US political speech since some of his congregants were gunned down, has said he plans to welcome the President.
"Hate is not political. It is not blue or red, it's not male or female, it doesn't know any of those divisions," Myers said.
However, Tree of Life's former rabbi, Chuck Diamond, told the Daily Beast that Trump's rhetoric was "awful." Like the city's mayor, Diamond asked the President to postpone his trip until the community has finished mourning.
"I would plead with the President to wait," Diamond said. "I also hope he would come in and offer his condolences after we have buried them and had a chance to mourn. "
Funerals are scheduled to run at least to Saturday.
Tens of thousands of people have signed an open letter published by a progressive Jewish organisation, Bend the Arc, saying that Trump would not be welcome unless he denounced white nationalism and stopped "targeting" minorities in his rhetoric and policies.
"For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement," the letter says. "You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday's violence is the direct culmination of your influence."
Aside from his divisive rhetoric, Trump has been criticised for repeatedly suggesting that more guns are the solution to mass shootings.
Trump made the same suggestion after the attack on the synagogue, although the gunman shot three police officers before he was captured. Armed officers have been present at multiple rampages in recent years, including at a Parkland, Florida, high school, an Orlando nightclub and the Fort Lauderdale airport.
The White House woke up to a new row, as video spread virally from a rally in which Vice-President Mike Pence prayed for the synagogue's victims with the leader of a "Messianic synagogue" who urges Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah - a movement condemned by Jewish leaders as Christian evangelism in disguise.
A Pence aide said that Rabbi Loren Jacobs was invited to the Michigan rally by Lena Epstein, a Republican congressional candidate, and said Pence did not know who the religious leader was when he called him onstage "to deliver a message of unity. "
Jacobs invoked "Jesus the Messiah" and "Savior Yeshua" - another name for Jesus - at the rally as he offered a prayer for the dead and wounded in Pittsburgh. "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God and Father of my Lord and Savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and my God and Father, too," he intoned.
