Rabbi recalls friend in synagogue shooting: 'Lori took the bullet for all of us'

The rabbi froze in the lobby of his synagogue, startled by the stranger in sunglasses pointing a rifle at him. As the shots zoomed toward him, he raised his hands in defense before scrambling to gather the young children nearby and move them somewhere safe.

“Miraculously, the gun jammed,” said Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, speaking with bandaged hands at an emotionally charged news conference outside Chabad of Poway on Sunday, a day after the shooting.

A congregant, an Army veteran, chased after the shooter, but he managed to get away, Goldstein said. An off-duty Border Patrol agent, who was also in the synagogue and was armed, fired at the gunman’s car as he drove away.

Goldstein said not long after he was shot, he saw his longtime friend Lori Gilbert-Kaye lying unconscious on the lobby floor. Her husband lay next to her, having fainted after trying to resuscitate her.

“Lori took the bullet for all of us,” said Goldstein, adding that the shooting could have been deadlier. He lost his right index finger in the attack.

“[It] will forever scar me, but it’s going to remind me how vulnerable we are and how heroic each one of us can be,” he said. “No matter what happened, we are going to keep our freedom. We are going to grow from it.”

Gilbert-Kaye, 60, died of at least one gunshot wound. Goldstein said he did not see her get shot and does not know whether she jumped in front of him to save him, as some witnesses have claimed.