"I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if I wouldn't have saved the girls," Almog Peretz told Israel Hayom Sunday morning from his hospital bed in Poway, California, after helping his three nieces escape a shooting attack during Shabbat services on Saturday.
"I had to do it, if I hadn't have done it – I'd have been a coward, I would have carried it on my conscience for the rest of my life," said Peretz, 34, who is in the United States visiting his sister, Eden Dahan, and her family, who moved there several years ago.
Peretz was sitting next to the emergency exit of the Chabad of San Diego County synagogue when the shooting began.
"I understood I had to get [the girls] out of the synagogue and run with them toward the houses [outside]. The emergency exit saved us; my luck was that I was right next to the door and he [suspected shooter John Earnest, 19, of San Diego] shot at me. He pointed the gun at me, I saw him do it. He saw me and didn't shout anything. He stood in the same spot the entire time, next to the entrance to the synagogue because he wanted to be close to the door – to get away. If I was losing my mind, imagine what the kids were going through; they didn't know where to run."
While in the midst of gathering his nieces, Peretz was shot in the leg. "While the shooting was going on I didn't feel a thing, just heat in the area I was hit; but in the moment I was full of adrenaline, I jumped from place to place. I didn't notice I was hit," he recounted.
Peretz was able to get the children outside to safety but when he reached the rabbi's home, he realized one of his nieces, Leanne, wasn't with him.
"When we got to the rabbi's house I suddenly saw I didn't have Leanne, my niece. I went back to the synagogue and the shooter had already fled; someone brought the girl to me. She had stayed in the bathroom and didn't come out."
About being labeled a hero, Peretz said: "If one of the girls had been wounded – it would have been on my conscience. I had to get them out of there alive. They didn't know where to run, if [the shooter] had moved closer he would have killed all the children. There have been some very touching conversations, everyone here has commended me and strengthened me, cared for me – and thanked me."
Aside from Peretz, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein and Noya Dahan, 8, were also wounded in the attack. Lori Kaye, 60, of Poway was killed, reportedly while trying to save Goldstein. Kaye is survived by her husband and 22-year-old daughter.
