Author: Katie Mettler / Source: Washington Post
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was preparing for his sermon during services Saturday morning, a series of ceremonies on the final day of Passover, when he walked into his synagogue’s banquet hall and heard the deafening bang.
Only moments before, Lori Gilbert Kaye, his friend of two decades and a pioneering congregant at Chabad of Poway, had stopped the rabbi to ask what time Yizkor would begin, a seasonal prayer meant to celebrate and remember those who have died.
She and her husband were there with their 22-year-old daughter. They wanted to honor Kaye’s mother.“11:30,” the rabbi replied.
[Authorities identify suspect in ‘hate crime’ synagogue shooting that left 1 dead, 3 injured]
So when he heard the bang, Goldstein thought Kaye may have fallen, or that perhaps a table had toppled. When he turned to look, though, he saw not Kaye, but a man wearing sunglasses and holding an assault rifle.
“I couldn’t see his eyes,” the rabbi recalled later. “I couldn’t see his soul.”
Soon there were more bangs moving in his direction, which Goldstein said he realized were gunshots. The rabbi raised his hands and bullets badly mangled his fingers. Shrapnel injured two others, both Israeli nationals, before the shooter’s gun “miraculously jammed,” the rabbi said. A 19-year-old man, identified by authorities as John Earnest, was chased from the synagogue and fled in a car, witnesses said. He was eventually detained by authorities.
Goldstein, bleeding badly from his hands, herded a group of young children outside, including his 4-year-old granddaughter. He made his way back into the banquet hall, where he finally found Kaye.
She was lying on the ground, unconscious, he said.
Beside her was her husband, a physician who had tried to save her but fainted. The couple’s daughter emerged, screaming.“It was the most heart-wrenching sight I could have seen,” Goldstein said. “I was frozen in time.”
Ultimately, the rabbi and the Israeli nationals survived their injuries. Kaye did not.
“In my own interpretation, Lori took the bullet for all of us. She died to protect all of us,” Goldstein said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. “This is Lori. This is her legacy, and her legacy will continue. It could have been so much worse.”
Just weeks before, Kaye and her husband had flown to New York…
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