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Synagogue Congregants Tell of Quick Action to Save Children Amid Chaos of Attack
Shooter abruptly halted fire: ‘He may have been trying to change a magazine, or he just panicked’

By Ian Lovett and Esther Fung Updated April 28, 2019 8:05 p.m. ET

POWAY, Calif.—Oscar Stewart was sitting in the back of the Chabad of Poway synagogue when he heard the gunshots, some 20 minutes after 11 a.m. services began on Saturday. He said his first reaction was to run and he sprinted out into the entryway—where he saw the gunman, firing an AR-style rifle down the hallway.

“As he saw me, he dropped his weapon, turned and ran,” Mr. Stewart said. “He may have been trying to change a magazine, or he just panicked.”

On Sunday, details of the shooting—which left one dead and three injured at a worship service on the last day of Passover—were beginning to emerge.

The suspect—19-year-old John Earnest—was in custody on charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder. Police said the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime after authorities found an online message in his name, in which he espouses anti-Semitism and allegedly claims to have set a fire at a mosque last month. There was no indication he was part of an organized group, the San Diego County sheriff said.

Mr. Earnest, of San Diego, purchased the gun used in the shooting earlier this month, according to a law-enforcement official.

Interviews with congregants and others among the approximately 100 people who were in the synagogue portrayed a chaotic yet short-lived incident in which people recognized quickly that a shooter was in their midst and took action. They covered one another and corralled children toward exits.

The synagogue’s rabbi, Yisroel Goldstein, had been preparing for his sermon when he saw one of his longtime congregants, Lori Kaye, in the lobby.

Ms. Kaye’s mother had recently died, and she wanted to know the time for the service when they would be offering prayers for the dead. Rabbi Goldstein told her it would be around 11:30 a.m., then went into the banquet hall to wash his hands.

A moment later, he heard a loud bang in the lobby and he went back out to see what was happening.

“I see a sight that—undescribable. Here is a young man standing with a rifle, pointing right at me,” the rabbi said. “He had sunglasses on. I couldn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t see his soul.”

More shots were fired, and the rabbi lifted his hands up. He lost the index finger on his right hand; doctors performed surgery Saturday to save the left index finger.

Rabbi Goldstein ran back into the banquet hall, hoping to get the children who were playing there to safety.

“My granddaughter, 4½ years old, sees her grandpa with a bleeding hand, and she sees me screaming and shouting, ‘Get out! Get out!’” he said. “She didn’t deserve to see her grandfather like that.”

Almog Peretz, 34, was visiting from Israel and came to Chabad of Poway with his sister and her family on Saturday. About an hour into prayers, he said, he was taking one of his nieces to play outside. Suddenly, behind him, he heard something that sounded like a bomb.

Mr. Peretz turned around and saw the gunman, standing near the front door of the synagogue with his gun pointed in his direction. He was hit a moment later—the bullet passed through his lower leg. His 8-year-old niece, Noya, was also hit.

He grabbed Noya and a younger child, and ran out a back door. At least a dozen children were playing outside, and he yelled at them to run.

“I tell them, ‘Come this way!’” he said. He said he led the children down a hill to a house where the rabbi’s son lives. Both Mr. Peretz and Noya have been released from the hospital.

Meanwhile, both Mr. Stewart and a Border Patrol agent who is a member of the congregation were pursuing the shooter, Rabbi Goldstein said.

As the gunman got into his car, Mr. Stewart heard the agent shout for everyone to clear away. Mr. Stewart backed off, and the agent fired five shots at the car, hitting it four times.

The rabbi said he had previously asked the agent, Jonathan Morales, to bring his weapon to worship, in case they needed it. He also said he and some members of the synagogue had previously attended a conference held by the city of Poway about how to deal with active shooters, and that helped them evacuate quickly.

“People need to know that we’re not sitting targets in synagogues,” said Roneet Lev, a longtime Chabad of Poway congregant and close friend of Ms. Kaye. “They will chase the gunman and get him down, and they did that on Saturday…We are going to protect ourselves.”


Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was shot in the hands in the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue. Photo: sandy huffaker/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
From his car, the gunman called the California Highway Patrol, reported he was involved in the shooting and provided his location, San Diego’s police chief, David Nisleit, said Saturday.

A police officer in the area heard on his scanner descriptions of the suspect and his car, and spotted him on a nearby highway.

The suspect pulled over, jumped out of his car with his hands up and was taken into custody, San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore said.

The officer reported seeing an AR-15-style semiautomatic weapon on the passenger seat.

In a news briefing, Sheriff Gore said the suspect had no prior arrests, but he is being investigated in connection with a fire at a mosque in Escondido, about 10 miles from Poway, last month.

Sheriff Gore said officials are investigating a manifesto shared by Mr. Earnest online.

The 4,000-word document, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, is filled with anti-Semitic invective. It also includes praise for the shooter in the New Zealand mosque massacre last month as well as the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh six months to the day before the Poway shooting. The writer also tells of a failed attempt to torch the Escondido mosque.

On Sunday, congregants gathered again—this time at the rabbi’s son’s house just next door, because the synagogue was still blocked off by police—to offer a prayer for the dead. This one was for Ms. Kaye herself.

The community said Ms. Kaye, 60 years old, brought food to families in need and was always supportive and present.

“We’re not doing well,” said Ms. Lev. “No one’s doing well.”

Ms. Lev said Ms. Kaye had come to a dinner at Ms. Lev’s home on Friday night to celebrate the graduation of Ms. Lev’s daughter’s from college.

“She came to my daughter’s graduation, with gifts and flowers, as Lori does. And we had a beautiful, beautiful Sabbath meal together.”

Rabbi Goldstein said that Ms. Kaye had been a pillar of their community.

When he started the congregation with nothing but an empty lot, Ms. Kaye, who used to work for Wells Fargo , helped him secure a construction loan for the building.

When the shooting was over, and the congregants were gathered outside, Rabbi Goldstein, his hand bleeding and bandaged, stood on a chair outside and spoke to them.

“We are a Jewish nation and we will stand tall,” he told them. “Terrorism like this will not take us down.”

—Dan Frosch, Jim Oberman and Elisa Cho contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Lovett at Ian.Lovett@wsj.com and Esther Fung at esther.fung@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
The rabbi of the Chabad of Poway synagogue is Yisroel Goldstein. An earlier version of this article misspelled his first name Yisrael. (April 28, 2019)

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Originally posted by Sigmund:
I've heard two news reports that the border patrol agent grabbed a "shared" handgun that was stored somewhere in the synagogue. My www searching has not found an article to confirm this. More details should be in the Tribune, but I can't open any articles there.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news