Oscar Stewart was focused on the comforting rhythm of the Torah reading when pops of gunfire cut through the sanctuary. Stewart watched fellow congregants run toward the exits. He began to follow them. Then, in a split-second decision, he turned around.
Oscar Stewart, 51, a worshiper at Chabad of Poway, chased the shooter out of the synagogue and into the parking lot.
Whatever it was that moved through him in that moment, it propelled Stewart into the lobby. He saw the young man — who authorities say was 19-year-old John T. Earnest — in a military-style vest wielding a semiautomatic rifle.The gunman fired two more rounds in response.From his time as a sergeant in the Army, Stewart knew that the rifle would be useless if he was within five feet of it. So he kept close to the shooter as he chased him into the parking lot.
Stewart sprinted into the synagogue. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was standing in the lobby with a prayer shawl wrapped around his bleeding hands. Then Stewart noticed a woman laying face-down on the floor. He flipped her over and recognized her as Lori Gilbert-Kaye.Stewart had begun attending Poway Chabad in August, and he knew Gilbert-Kaye as a kind, passionate person. They inhabited opposite sides of the political spectrum — he a centrist Democrat, and she a conservative.
Stewart, who works as an electrician, could barely sleep Saturday night. He thought of how the day would change his life forever, for better or worse. He was deployed to Iraq for a year in 2003, but never thought he would hear gunfire again — especially in the United States. He said he could no longer be naive about how gun violence might touch his life, now that it had.
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