Eight-year-old Noya Dahan had finished praying and gone to play with other children at her Southern California synagogue when gunshots rang out. Her uncle grabbed her and the other children, leading them outside to safety as her leg bled from a shrapnel wound.
“I was scared, really, really scared,” Noya said, recalling how the group of children cried out of fear after a gunman entered Chabad of Poway on Saturday morning and started shooting. “I didn’t see my dad. I thought he was dead.”
The onslaught on the last day of Passover, a Jewish holiday celebrating freedom, wounded Dahan, her uncle Almog Peretz and the congregation’s rabbi. The attack killed beloved congregant Lori Kaye, 60.
Photo: AP
Authorities said the 19-year-old gunman opened fire as about 100 people were worshiping exactly six months after a mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein said he was preparing for a service and heard a loud sound, turned around and a saw a young man wearing sunglasses standing in front of him with a rifle.
“I couldn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t see his soul,” Goldstein said.
He raised his hands and lost one of his fingers in the shooting.
And then, Goldstein said: “Miraculously, the gun jammed.”
In the moments that followed, Goldstein said he wrapped his bloodied hand in a prayer shawl and addressed congregants gathered outside the building, vowing to stay strong in the face of the deadly attack targeting his community.
“We are a Jewish nation that will stand tall. We will not let anyone take us down. Terrorism like this will not take us down,” Goldstein recalled telling the community.
Police yesterday were examining the motive of suspect John Earnest, who appears to be the author of an online manifesto who claimed to have previously set fire to a mosque and drawn inspiration from last month’s mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand that killed 50 people.
Earnest, who has been held without bail, is scheduled to appear in a San Diego court tomorrow to face a charge of murder and three counts of attempted murder, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department Web site.
The gunman is believed to have carried out the shooting without support from anyone else, San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore said in a statement on Sunday.
“We are continuing to explore every investigative avenue to bring out all the facts in this case,” Gore said.
Police searched Earnest’s house and said he was also being investigated in connection with an arson attack on a mosque in nearby Escondido, California, on March 24.
There were indications an AR-type assault weapon might have malfunctioned after the gunman fired numerous rounds inside, Gore said.
An off-duty Border Patrol agent fired at the shooter as he fled, missing him, but striking the getaway vehicle, the sheriff said.
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,” he said.
Goldstein described Kaye as a pioneering founding member of the congregation and said he was heartbroken by her death. He said the attack could have harmed many more people had the shooter turned toward the sanctuary, where so many were praying.
“Lori took the bullet for all of us,” the rabbi said, his hands wrapped in bandages. “She didn’t deserve to die.”
He said that Kaye’s physician husband was called to tend to a wounded worshiper and fainted when he realized it was his wife.
Friends described Kaye as giving, warm and attentive to community members on their birthdays and when they were sick. A wife and mother, she loved gardening and made delicious challah for her family and friends, said Roneet Lev, 55.
“It was a hate crime, no doubt about it,” White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Fox News Sunday.
He said investigators have not seen any connection between the suspect and other extremist groups.
California State University, San Marcos, confirmed that Earnest was a student who was on the dean’s list and said the school was “dismayed and disheartened” that he was suspected in “this despicable act.”
Goldstein said US President Donald Trump called him to share condolences on behalf of the American people.
The White House acknowledged the call.
“The president expressed his love for the Jewish people and the entire community of Poway,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.
On Sunday night, hundreds of people gathered at a park for a vigil to honor the victims.
People at the community park near Chabad synagogue in Poway held candles and listened to prayer in Hebrew.
Leaders asked community members to do acts of kindness to remember Kaye.
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