Two families, shared resolve
Shooting brings tragedy, then unity
“Throughout history, Jews have always been brutalized, and a lot of times, Jews just took it. We didn’t fight back. And I wanted to teach my children to be fighters and fight back.” mother of six, after the Chabad of Poway synagogue shooting
POWAY, Calif. – When Shaina heard the first shot, her active shooter training kicked in. Then the 15-year-old paused.
“It can’t be Poway. It can’t be us.” Then the second shot rang out. She didn’t hesitate. Her mother had prepared her for this.
Run, hide and barricade. Never look back.
Moments before, Shaina had been babysitting a group of kids on a playground outside the Chabad of Poway synagogue in a suburb of San Diego. It was around 11:15 a.m. on Saturday, April 27. Inside, congregants chanted from the Torah.
Now Shaina sprinted through the parking lot to the nearby home of a rabbi. The kids she was babysitting “followed her like ducklings,” Shaina’s mother would say later.
Shaina pounded on the door. Her heart might have been racing, but she feigned calmness for the sake of the children surrounding her.
“There’s an active shooter at the shul,” Shaina told the rabbi’s wife.
Among those at Shaina’s side was a family friend, Noya Dahan, 8.
Blood gushed from Noya’s leg and speckled her face.
The City in the Country
Two mothers, Debra and Eden, sent their families to the Chabad of Poway on that Saturday, the last day of Passover.
That morning, Debra, a mother of six, had limited breakfast options to offer her three youngest children. USA TODAY agreed at Debra’s request not to use her family’s last name because they fear for their safety after the shooting.
During Passover, observant Jews eat matzah – a cracker-like bread made without yeast – while avoiding grains such as bread, pasta and cereal. It was also the Sabbath, a time between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday when observant Jews refrain from driving, cooking or operating electrical appliances, including phones.
Since Debra couldn’t cook breakfast during Shabbat, she had prepared a dish known as matzah brei, which included gluten-free matzah, scrambled with eggs and eaten sweet or savory.
After breakfast, Debra’s three youngest kids – Netanya, Shaina and Asher – headed to the synagogue with their father, who is a doctor and rabbi. For the family, walking about 25 minutes to the temple was a regular part of observing the Sabbath.
Debra stayed behind. She needed to prepare for a meal that celebrates the end of Passover before joining her family at the synagogue. And she wanted to enjoy a few quiet moments in her normally full house.
Their walk took them through “The City in the Country” – Poway, California. Nestled between mountains with rocky faces often scorched by the sun, Poway sits on the northern border of San Diego’s sprawling city limits. The Pacific Ocean is just over the horizon.
For Eden Dahan and her family, the town is a stark contrast to where they once lived: Eight years ago, they left Israel for a safer life in America.
When they left Israel, they had two young children. Now, the Dahans have five – all under 10 years old. The family did not want to raise their children surrounded by “fire” and “rockets,” said Eden Dahan, mother of Noya.
For about three years, the family has loved living in Poway, Eden said. Chabad of Poway had become a second home to the Dahans; the family was “always there.” And while mass shootings recently occurred at houses of worship in Pittsburgh and New Zealand, Eden couldn’t imagine such a tragedy in her hometown.
Growing up with fear
After growing up in Indiana, Debra wanted to make sure her children were prepared for a tragedy. In some parts of the Midwest, she said, there was overt racism and anti-Semitism.
“I grew up with fear,” she said. “I didn’t want my kids to be victims.”
Debra, who served in the U.S. Navy for nearly three decades, felt as if her children could become targets, even in Poway. She spoke frankly with her family about active shooters the way some parents talk to their kids about drunken driving or sex education.
“Throughout history, Jews have always been brutalized, and a lot of times, Jews just took it,” Debra said. “We didn’t fight back. And I wanted to teach my children to be fighters and fight back.”
Debra taught her kids how to remain safe in active shooter situations. She said that if they weren’t in the line of fire, they should run as far as possible and hide. If they couldn’t run, they should hide and barricade themselves. And she instilled in them the No. 1 rule: Never look back.
Debra also trained her children for situations beyond active shooters. When she asks them how to stop a terrorist on an airplane, her three youngest kids respond in unison.
“Hot water,” they say. “In his face.” “Because there’s more of you than what? …” Debra prompts them.
“The terrorist,” said 11-year-old Netanya, a teeny girl who wears braces and loves gymnastics.
‘I couldn’t see his soul’
Debra’s son Asher, 17, and his father were inside the Chabad of Poway sanctuary when a loud noise interrupted the reading of the Torah. It sounded as if a table had tipped over, he said.
A moment later, more noises rang out – gunshots.
Many people in the congregation, including his father, threw themselves under the pews. But Asher ducked, ran outside and hid behind a bush. “I knew what I needed to do, but I was still kind of panicked that he’d come around,” Asher said of the gunman.
Then he heard someone say the synagogue was safe again. “I came out, walked through the sanctuary, came through the lobby, and that’s when I saw Lori Kaye passed out on the floor.”
The gunfire came from a 19-year-old suspect who had “terror on his mind,” San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan would tell a room full of reporters days later. The suspect wore a tactical vest and had five additional 10-round magazines. He fired eight to 10 shots. Two struck Lori Gilbert-Kaye, fatally wounding her. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein said she died protecting others.
“I turn around and I see a sight undescribable,” Goldstein said as he choked up. “Here is a young man standing with a rifle, pointing right at me, and I look at him. He had sunglasses on. I couldn’t see his eyes. I couldn’t see his soul.”
The shooting stopped. Authorities later said the gun may have jammed or the suspect may have had trouble reloading. And the community united in defiance. Two congregants – one armed and one with military experience – jumped into action, chasing the gunman off.
Noya Dahan fled with Shaina, but one of Noya’s sisters became separated from her family. Sensing the danger, the girl locked herself in the bathroom. But she heard the terror – the gunshots, the cursing. When a rescuer came, the 5-year-old asked if the man was the “bad guy or the good guy?” Eden said.
As she left the building, the girl saw terrible things, her mother said. “She saw the woman dead on the floor. And all the blood – she saw everything.”
Eden said she was at home when the shooting began. Soon many of the children fleeing the violence would seek safety with her, she said.
One of those children was Noya. In the chaos, it wasn’t clear to Eden what had happened – so she struggled to make sense of why her daughter was covered in blood: Maybe something happened on the street? Maybe she got into an accident? “I never had it in my mind that someone came to the synagogue and started shooting.”
Debra was walking to the synagogue when she saw the first police car. She instinctively knew what had happened, she later said. She recalled that a fellow congregant tried to stop her: “Don’t go up there. There’s an active shooter.”
“But I already knew . ... I’ve never run so fast in my life.” she said. “No one’s going to hurt my kids.”
She found her husband and Asher. She found Shaina, who had hidden in the rabbi’s house. During that time, Shaina had sat on the floor of the home and checked Noya’s wounds for bullets. But while she cared for one girl, she worried about another.
In the chaotic sprint away from the playground, Shaina and her sister Netanya had become separated.
“She came out and told me, ‘I lost Netanya,’ ” Debra said. “Which panicked her, because she knows: Family first.”
Debra’s adrenaline kicked into even higher gear. She combed through the temple, searching for her youngest child. When police made her leave the temple, she walloped the doors of homes near the temple, still searching.
Finally, Debra pounded on the door of the right house. Inside was her 11-yearold daughter, startled by the noise.
Grieving and healing
Debra and her family spent the last afternoon of Passover being interviewed by police. That evening a sheriff’s deputy escorted the family home.
There, they discovered that a bouquet of tulips had wilted, seemingly in a matter of hours. Lori Gilbert-Kaye had dropped them off just Thursday, and they had looked vibrant that morning. “They died with her,” Debra said. For at least the first days after the shooting, no one in Debra’s house slept through the night. Shaina jumped at sudden sounds or movements. Her heart raced when she heard a knock on the door or a chair tipping over. Netanya struggled with loud televisions, running water or spinning washing machines.
As Debra and her family heal, their resolve strengthens. The gunman may have targeted them for being Jewish, but their faith has become stronger for it. “God was the reason we’re all here,” Asher said as he sat with his family around their dining room table.
Yet there’s still no guide for dealing with the most mundane moments after the unthinkable has happened.
In the days after the shooting, Chabad of Poway congregants were more likely to greet one another with embraces, Debra said, because greetings like “how are you?” suddenly rang hollow. Why ask the question when they know nobody slept the night before?
“And then when the hugs come,” she said, “you start crying.”