A man who helped barricade a Manchester synagogue has described the moment the terrifying “monster” tried to bash down the building’s doors. Alan Levy was inside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall when Jihad Al-Shamie rammed a car into and stabbed worshippers gathering for a service to mark Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
Al-Shamie, 35, who was on bail for an alleged rape, was shot dead by police as he targeted the place of worship. Calling the knifeman a “jihadist monster” Mr Levy, who is a chair of the Trustees of Heaton Park Synagogue, recalled locking the building down with other congregation members as “he was shoulder-charging the doors trying to get in”. While the attacker tried to bash down the doors with knives and plant pots, Mr Levy fiercely held the doors to the entrance.
He told the BBC: “I saw this great, big, evil monster shoulder charge in the front doors, trying to bash them down with a knife in his hand.
“The only thing I heard was him saying ‘this is what you’re going to get for killing our children’.
“That’s the only thing I heard him say. And we were behind the doors and we were saying ‘we are not letting this man in’.
“He was a deranged, evil monster.”
Mr Levy told Sky News Al-Shamie was throwing plant pots at the glass in a desperate bid to gain entry.
“He was throwing plant pots at the glass. He was using a knife to try and get in. He was trying each door in turn. When we realised which door he was going to, we moved doors so there was more pressure on the doors to keep them closed”, recalled Mr Levy.
Adrian Daulby, 53, was accidentally shot by police while attempting to prevent Al-Shamie entering the synagogue during the attack.
He was killed with Melvin Cravitz, 66, from Crumpsall, a worshipper who helped prevent the attacker from entering the premises.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Al-Shamie wasn’t known to counter-terrorism police, Al-Shamie but he is understood to have been granted British citizenship when he was around 16, having entered the UK as a young child.
He lived in a council house just two miles from where he carried out the atrocity. One of his neighbours said “he never spoke to anyone”.
Four people were arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism and were still in custody as of this morning.