Worshipers recount horror, heroics in aftermath of deadly synagogue shooting

A friend of the woman killed in the Southern California synagogue shooting said Sunday the victim’s physician husband was called to tend to a wounded worshiper and fainted when he realized it was his wife.

Sixty-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye died after being shot Saturday at Chabad of Poway near San Diego during a Passover service. Three others, including two Israelis, were hurt. The three wounded were all released from hospitals, officials said Sunday.

The heartbreaking account is one of dozens from worshipers who were in the synagogue at the time of the attack, painting a picture of a chaotic scene in which adults tried to shield children and seek shelter as a gunman wreaked terror for several minutes with a semi-automatic assault rifle.

Aside from Gilbert-Kaye, three people were injured in the attack: Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, 8-year-old Noya Dahan, originally from Israel, and her uncle, Almog Peretz, who was shot while trying to shield children from the terrorist, an apparent white nationalist. All three are expected to recover.

Several people, including congregation member Roneet Lev, have said that Gilbert-Kaye threw herself in front of Goldstein to protect him, possibly saving his life.

Another friend of Kaye’s, Audrey Jacobs, said on Facebook that she was told by a friend who was at the synagogue during the attack that Kaye was “taking bullets” for the rabbi to save his life.

Goldstein is recovering from a gunshot wound to the hand.

Lev told the Los Angeles Times that Kaye’s husband began to do CPR on an injured person, and was overcome when he realized it was his wife.

She said Kaye had gone to the synagogue to say the Jewish prayer for the dead for her mother, who had recently died.

“The irony is, people will be saying it for her now,” she said.

Israel Dahan, whose daughter Noya was injured, said Sunday that he was at prayer inside the synagogue when the gunman entered.

“I was the first to see him [enter the sanctuary] because I was sitting in front of the main door. I started shouting at people to run away,” he told Israel Radio.

“My 5-year-old daughter heard the shots and shut herself in the toilets,” he said. “Luckily, his weapon jammed.”

Peretz said the man entered the synagogue and started shooting in all directions.

“I was with my back to the shooter. I heard a shot or two and then turned around to face him and that’s when he fired at me. I ran quickly, picking up a small girl in my hands,” he told the Israeli YNet news site. “He hit me once in the leg and I kept running. I didn’t feel it much since there were so many bullets flying by. I heard them and I saw them right next to me.”

‘He was a coward’

When the gunfire erupted inside a San Diego-area synagogue, Shimon Abitbul immediately placed his 2-year-old grandson on the floor.

Abitbul said Sunday that he was at the Orthodox synagogue with his son-in-law and grandson when the shooting started.

Abitbul grabbed the toddler and sprinted away when there was a break in the gunfire. He later returned to try to help a woman he described as having a hole in her chest, apparently Gilbert-Kaye.

Abitbul said that when the congregation’s rabbi was shot in the hand, he had wrapped his wounded fingers in a prayer shawl.

“I heard a large bang, a large noise,” Goldstein told the Today show on Sunday. “I turned around and I am face to face with this murderer terrorist, who is holding the rifle and looking straight at me. And then as soon as he saw me he started to shoot towards me. And that’s when I put my hands up, and my fingers got blown away. And then he continued on and he killed Lori Kaye right there on the spot.”

“I turned around and I saw a group of children in the banquet hall, including my granddaughter and I just ran, not even knowing that my fingers were blown off, and got the kids outside, got everyone out of the sanctuary safely,” said Goldstein, noting the presence of an off-duty guard at the site.

Outside the synagogue, before emergency services arrived, Goldstein said, he continued his sermon to give his community members encouragement.

“I got up there and I just spoke from the heart and just giving everyone the courage to know… it was just 70 years ago during the Holocaust, we were gunned down like this.

“And I just want to let my fellow Americans know, we’re not going to let that happen here. Not here in San Diego, not here in Poway, not here in the United States of America.”

A military-trained congregant, Oscar Stewart, told The New York Times he chased down the gunman.

“He looked scared,” he said. “I yelled as loud as I could in my mean sergeant voice. I yelled, ‘Get down!’ and then I ran toward him.”

The shooter, identified by police as 19-year-old John Earnest, fled.

“He was a coward,” Stewart added.

Shortly after fleeing, Earnest called 911 to report the shooting, San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit said. When an officer reached him on a roadway, “the suspect pulled over, jumped out of his car with his hands up and was immediately taken into custody,” Nisleit said.

The shooting in Poway’s Chabad synagogue came exactly six months after a white supremacist killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue — the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in US history.