Brian Horowitz was sitting in a cafe having brunch with his family when screams and chaos from an attack at a Jewish community event nearby, interrupted their meal.
Horowitz, who is from Denver, was in the area to show his teenage niece and nephew the University of Colorado campus in hope that they’d enroll there, he told CNN.
Instead, the 37-year-old jumped from the table and ran toward the suspect.
“‘F*** you Zionists. You’re killing my people so I kill you,’” Horowitz said he heard the man, now identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman said.
The attacker then singled out people in the plaza saying “’you’re a killer, you’re a killer,’” Horowitz said.
Horowitz said the attacker then locked eyes with him.
“That’s when he looked at me and said you’re a killer,” Horowitz, recalled.
Horowitz called 911, he said, and remembers hearing screams from other witnesses, while most of the injured victims were silent.
Not knowing how best to help, he followed the lead of others who grabbed buckets and poured water over people’s burns. Horowitz said he found one elderly victim with severe burns to her feet and hands who told him to worry about her friend instead, he said.
“She was looking at me and saying ‘please help her. Put the water on her,’” Horowitz said. The victim’s friend was lying face down on the pavement with severe burns to her calf, the skin barely visible. “She was cool, calm and collected – almost as if she had been there before,” Horowitz said.
Three minutes after Horowitz called emergency services, police arrived and took the suspect into custody, Horowitz said, noting the wait felt like an eternity.
“It was easily the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Horowitz said. “There’s someone who is outraged enough to go and attack these elderly people who are doing absolutely nothing to provoke it other than walk in silence and meet in a courtyard peacefully. It’s unbelievable.”
Brian Horowitz, witness
Horowitz, who is back in Denver now said after the weekend’s incident, he’s left to process his own rage and fear.
“I can never in my entire life think of another time where I wish I had a gun on me to try and take this guy out in a safe way for everyone else and myself included rather than rushing this guy and potentially risking my life for that,” Horowitz said. “It’s a feeling of helplessness.”
