Witness describes horror of synagogue massacre

He thought it was falling furniture.

The morning service was just beginning on the second floor of Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighbourhood on Saturday when E. Joseph Charny heard a loud noise from downstairs.

“It sounded like some big thing falling over, like a coat rack,” Charny said.

There were about six to eight congregants bowing their heads in the pews, along with Charny, all of them waiting solemnly for the weekly services to get started, people Charny knew well. A man appeared in the doorway. Charny doesn’t remember him saying anything. Gunshots cracked across the chamber.

“I looked up and there were all these dead bodies,” said Charny, 90, a retired psychiatrist from Squirrel Hill. “I wasn’t in the mood to stay there.”

So Charny ran away from the man, avoiding the bullets.

Charny is a longtime member of the synagogue. His intimate knowledge of the building’s nooks and crannies probably saved his life. As bullets ripped through the room, Charny and two others — the rabbi and his assistant — fled for the building’s third floor.

Charny found himself tucked into a storage room stuffed with cardboard boxes. The building was silent, he said.

“We all knew leaving too soon would have been our deaths,” Charny said.

Charny and the two others with whom he was hiding eventually slipped out of their hiding places, emerging outside the synagogue, where they were met by police. Charny is recovering at home from his close call.

“At first I felt numb, then thankful,” he said. “I don’t need to tell you how terrible this has all been.”