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A congregant in Manchester, England, described how fellow worshipers, including the rabbi, used their bodies to barricade the entrance as the assailant tried to force his way in.
Oct. 3, 2025, 9:59 a.m. ET
Ivan Telzer was in the middle of his prayers at the Heaton Park Congregation’s synagogue in Manchester, England, when people started shouting.
“Shut the doors!” they cried. “Shut the doors!”
Mr. Telzer said he could hear someone pounding from outside, trying to get in the synagogue. Some of the roughly 20 congregants who had gathered for morning services on Yom Kippur, including the rabbi, used their bodies to barricade the large black doors, he said.
The police later identified the person outside as Jihad al-Shamie, a Syrian-born British citizen who carried out a terrorist attack on Thursday in a city that is home to Britain’s second-largest Jewish community.
Within minutes, amid the panic inside the synagogue, Mr. Telzer saw one of the congregants slump to the floor, he recalled in an interview. The police said on Friday that the person was one of two who had accidentally been struck by police bullets as officers shot at Mr. al-Shamie. One was wounded and the other died, the police said.
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The attack started, the authorities said, at 9:31 a.m., when Mr. al-Shamie rammed his car into people outside the synagogue before getting out and stabbing victims with a knife. The rampage was over within seven minutes, after the police shot and killed him. Two men, Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, died at the scene, though it was unclear which one was killed by a police bullet.
