Oscar Stewart, the Iraq war veteran who ran, yelling, toward the gunman at the Chabad synagogue in Poway, Calif. this past weekend, said Tuesday he had been concerned that the gunman could have left the synagogue and moved on to a nearby church or a grocery store to continue opening fire.
"I remember the Christ Church shootings. where a guy went from one mosque to another," Stewart, who served in both the Navy and in the Army, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "There was a church next door. There is a grocery store down the street with people just all the time. I didn't think about that. I think my instinct wanted to keep that from happening."
Stewart said he had initially taken a few steps toward running away with others in the synagogue before turning back toward the gunfire, where he confronted the gunman and "yelled out as loud as I could."
The man, later identified as John Ernest, 19, "starts the car and in this moment I hear in the background I have a gun, clear out," Stewart recalled. "Jonathan Morales of the Border Patrol agent opens up with five rounds into the car. It was still parked. I want to make that clear. I am told he did something wrong. He didn't. He shot at a parked car and we were trying to keep the guy from going anywhere that's what I believe he was doing."
Stewart also recalled helping perform CPR on Lori Kaye, the woman who was killed in the attack, along with another man and with her husband, a doctor who did not initially realize that he was working on his own wife.
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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