COMBAT VET STOPPED THE SYNAGOGUE SHOOTER

[CharlesHarris]

From The San Diego Tribune

The man who fired a semi-automatic weapon inside the Chabad of Poway synagogue in San Diego on Saturday froze, dropped his gun and sprinted to his car when he saw Oscar Stewart come barreling toward him...

The Iraq combat veteran said his military training kicked in.

“I knew I had to be within five feet of this guy so his rifle couldn’t get to me,” Stewart said. “So I ran immediately toward him, and I yelled as loud as I could. And he was scared. I scared the hell out of him.”

Stewart served in the Navy in explosive ordnance disposal from 1990 to 1994, then enlisted in the Army in 2001 because of the Sept. 11 terror attacks... He was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and left the military in 2004, as a staff sergeant. He’s now in construction work.

When the gunman opened fire, he was in the back of the synagogue. By the time he got to the lobby, the shooter had killed one woman, blown the finger off of a rabbi, and injured two others.

“I heard gunshots,” Stewart said. “And everybody got up and started trying to get out the back door, so I — for whatever reason — I didn’t do that. I ran the other way. I ran towards the gun shots.”

“When I came around the corner into the lobby area, I saw the individual with a gun, and he fired two rounds...I yelled at him...he immediately dropped his weapon and turned and ran. And then I gave chase...”

Stewart said he chased him...out to his car and ...intending to...drag him out of the car. That’s when a Border Patrol agent who attends the synagogue came running out to the parking lot... The agent fired several rounds into the lower part of the vehicle, intending to disable it, but the shooter managed to drive away. The two of them then grabbed a phone from someone and called the police...

After he sped off, Stewart ran back into the synagogue and found a woman he knew, 60-year-old Lori Gilbert Kaye, unresponsive on the floor in the lobby. He began CPR and continued trying to bring her back to life as a couple of doctors arrived and began to assist him. She didn’t make it... Stewart considers her the real hero. Eyewitnesses said she jumped in front of the rabbi to save his life...

Police said Stewart's actions effectively stopped the shooter... He [Stewart] thinks... the shooter had emptied his magazine...let the slung weapon drop and fled.

“When I yelled at him he turned and looked at me...the look on his face was one of amazement at first, and then one of fear. He saw me coming, and I was ready to do whatever I had to do to stop him...”

The funeral service for Kaye is on Monday. He expects the synagogue will be totally packed.

[Mortblanc]

And what was it that we were always taught as SOP in these reaction drills.

*You always charge an ambush!

[Straight Shooter]

A very brave man indeed ! he must have trained with some Welsh guys ! CH ……………..joking of course .

[Skean Dhude]

A brave man. This could easily have gone a different way if the attacker had been more experienced.

[Mortblanc]

No SS he was not hanging out with the Welsh, he was apparently sober!

One of the characteristics of the mass shooters encountered here in the States is the fact that they are universally untrained.

They almost never have military experience in a combat branch (some have been vets from service branches; finance, catering corp, motor-pool, etc) and none have ever been reported to belong to an organized gun club, and none known have ever been members of the NRA, which is so universally hated by our liberal politicians for promoting gun ownership.

There are only two exceptions to this statement that I can recall at the moment. Charles Whitman, the shooter in the Texas Tower incident and Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of JFK.

Both of those individuals were former Marines (we will not get into that), but they had never seen combat.

It is a lack of knowledge of the semi-auto platforms that is partly the reason for the fear of the semi-auto. If one of the pigs jams it is almost impossible to clear the thing without disassembling the weapon. Clearing a jam can take several minutes and result in the death of a soldier, unless he is properly trained.

That proper training is to drop the problematic weapon immediately and draw your backup weapon. You fix the jammed gun latter.

Changing magazines offers the same situation in a combat encounter. Even if a civilian shooter trains to extremely high accuracy levels, most of them would never consider doing mag change drills until they are proficient in that action.

Most soldiers are not trained in proper mag change drills unless they are in the last stages of training for placement in a unit that knows it will be in combat. You do not get that in "basic training", which everyone takes. Even the military guards and restricts some of its training to higher risk troops.

Untrained shooters shoot until the gun is empty and when it goes click they think "Oh My!" and look to see what the problem is, then fumble with changing the mag. I watch this action in almost every new semi-auto shooter I encounter.

In that 10 second interval a determined person, that recognizes the empty state of the gun, can charge from 50 yards away and take the shooter down.