An Iraq combat veteran who ran toward the man firing shots inside the Chabad of Poway synagogue in San Diego Saturday and yelled at him until he dropped his weapon is denying he's a hero and says he thinks there may have been an angel behind him speaking through his voice.
“I knew I had to be within five feet of this guy so his rifle couldn’t get to me,” the veteran, Oscar Stewart, 51, told The Daily Caller. "I ran immediately toward him, and I yelled as loud as I could. And he was scared. I scared the hell out of him.”
The priest of a neighboring church heard Stewart yelling at the man, and others at the church told the veteran it sounded more like four or five people were shouting.
Stewart said his military training had kicked in. He was in the Navy from 1990 to 1994 and then enlisted in the Army in 2001 after the 9-11 attacks.
He added that he was in the back of the synagogue when the gunman, identified by police as John T. Earnest, 19, after his arrest, opened fire. By the time Stewart got to the lobby, the shooter had already killed Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60, shot off Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein's finger, and injured two others.
Stewart said he chased the man to his car, and then a Border Patrol agent attending the services also ran to the parking lot and yelled to Stewart to get down, because he had a gun.
He credited Kaye with being the real hero because she'd jumped in front of the rabbi, saving his life, but he doesn't believe reports that the shooter's gun jammed.
“Full automatic weapons will jam,” he said. “Semi-automatic weapons do not jam.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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