Survivors of synagogue shooting testify, describing harrowing moments of hiding during attack

Survivors of shooting describe moments of joy, and then how their paths diverged

5:33 p.m.

The moments before the shooting took place were, in many cases, light and even funny, according to the testimony of several survivors on Wednesday.

Augie Siriano ate bagels and drank tea with David and Cecil Rosenthal, two brothers with intellectual disabilities, that morning when he arrived for work. Siriano had been the janitor at Tree of Life for 25 years and would often spend these first moments helping the Rosenthals tie their shoes and ties.

When Barry Werber showed up for services later that day, he saw Cecil trying to have a conversation with 87-year-old Melvin Wax. Wax was known for telling endless jokes without ever repeating them. But Cecil couldn't understand what Wax was saying and tried to tell Wax this. But Wax couldn't hear out of one of his ears. So Wax kept telling jokes until Cecil kind of gave up and went back to where his service would be held.

"This is a very fond memory of mine," Werber said.

Martin Gaynor, Dan Leger, and Jerry Rabinowitz were joking around before services started, Gaynor said. Leger and Rabinowitz were friends and sometimes coworkers who ate lunch together at UPMC Shadyside Hospital, where Leger was a nurse and Rabinowitz a doctor.

But then their stories diverged.

Leger and Rabinowitz were trained in medicine, and they instinctively ran toward the shooting, even though Leger said in retrospect it might not have been the best idea.

Gaynor, on the other hand, had recently had an active shooter training at work and when he heard gunshots, he ran the opposite direction, faster than he had run since high school, he said. He exited through doors that just the previous month had been barred shut, after a building inspection concluded that the bars needed to be removed in case of an emergency and people needed to leave. Because it was the Sabbath, he didn't have a phone on him, and had to stop at a neighbor's house to call 911. Gaynor later found a small scab on his arm in a place where his clothing also had a hole in it.

Rabinowitz, who had run in the other direction, was shot and killed. Leger was shot in the abdomen and fell onto a stairway, unable to move, for 45 minutes. A bullet had broken his hip bone, exploding his bladder and rupturing his intestines. His breathing became shallower and the pain grew increasingly intense. It was the Sabbath so he didn't have a phone on him to call for help.

Leger had served as a chaplain for hundreds of other people near the end of their lives and now found himself saying the Jewish prayer for forgiveness for himself. "I reviewed my life and thought about the wonder of my life and the beauty of it and the happiness I had experienced in my life. The joy of having two sons," he said. "A wife … another wife previous to that wife. And all the wonderful friends I had in this world."

In the closet with Carol Black, who testified earlier in the day, Werber dialed 911 with an old model "dumb phone" that he said, fortunately turned dark after he called 911. So he and Black were able to wait in the pitch black dark of the closet they were hiding in.

Werber, 81, had served four years in the air force, but when a 911 operator asked him if he was hurt, he could be heard on the 911 recording whisper, "No, just scared as all get out."

A third day of testimony is slated for Thursday.

Shooting survivor describes harrowing moments hidden in closet, losing her brother

12:37 p.m.

Carol Black began attending services at the New Light congregation about 11 years ago, she told the court Wednesday, joining her brother Richard Gottfried, who had been attending since 1992. Black had hurt her hip exercising and was looking for something to do. She then became so involved with the congregation that she had a Bat Mitzvah as an adult. In 2018, New Light held its services at the Tree of Life synagogue.

On October 27, 2018, Black saw her brother walking into the synagogue as she drove up to park but didn’t get a chance to talk to him before she walked into the start of service, a couple minutes late. Her brother was preparing food in the kitchen. Black was getting ready to take out her head covering and her prayer shawl when she heard a loud noise upstairs. New Light met in the basement of the Tree of Life Synagogue. She and two other men at the service that morning realized it was gun fire and jammed themselves into a crowded, dark closet where they waited silently.

The shooting stopped for awhile and Melvin Wax — an 87-year-old congregant who would park his car around the corner so other more infirm members could park in the nearby parking lot — opened the door. The shooter noticed the door and shot Wax. He fell just inches from Black, who was crouched behind the metal door of the closet.

“It just occurred to me that if I was calm — and I just kept telling myself over and over again that I was going to be fine — nothing would happen to me,” she said. “I just thought if I remained calm I would not give my position away.”

The other congregant hiding in the closet with her, Barry Werber, called 911 on his phone and they waited silently there for a long time, sometimes hearing more gunfire.

After two SWAT team members finally rescued Black and Werber, she said goodbye to Wax, silently, as she stepped over his body. Later she heard on a police radio that there were eight people confirmed dead and others that had been sent to the hospital. Black said a prayer that her brother might be one of the people on the way to the hospital.

The court played a 911 call that her brother, Gottfried made, asking for help, just before he was killed.

“He was frightened,” Black said.

Images from yesterday's testimony, including a prayer book with a bullet hole

10:54 a.m.

Editor's note: This post contains consolidated reporting from the second day of coverage on our live blog.