Nine-year-old Odai Shanah, whose mother emigrated from war-torn Gaza and settled in Southern California two decades ago, was among dozens of children forced to huddle in classrooms on Monday when deadly gunfire erupted at the mosque where they attend school.
In an interview hours after the late-morning shooting at the Islamic Centre of San Diego, Shanah recalled hearing a barrage of gunshots coming from outside the walls of the complex, which also houses an Islamic day school.
Shanah said he and his classmates were quickly ushered into a closet where they crowded together, trembling in fear as 12 to 16 more shots rang out. At some point after the shooting ceased, they heard members of a police SWAT team shouting from outside the classroom, “‘OK, open up,’ then they opened the door”, the boy recounted.
As they were escorted out of the building by police officers, “we saw a bunch of bad stuff, people laying down and yeah, bad stuff”, Shanah said, using a phrase that he acknowledged meant that he was referring to the victims’ bodies.
“My legs were shaking and my hands and my head were like hurting a lot. I felt like a rock,” he said.
Police said three men affiliated with the Islamic centre, including a security guard credited by authorities with preventing greater bloodshed, were shot dead outside the mosque by two teen suspects, who later took their own lives several blocks away.
Both of Shanah’s parents gave permission for their son to be interviewed by name for this article, and to recount the experience in his own words.
Emerging from his hiding place after the gunfire ended, Shanah said he witnessed police kick in the door of an adjacent classroom, apparently as SWAT teams advanced room to room through the building.
“They told us to put our hands up and form a big line,” the boy said, adding that he saw a group of younger students forming another line to be evacuated, before he and his classmates were ushered through the complex to the exterior.
The gunmen never entered the interior of the mosque complex, and all of the students of the school, known as the Bright Horizon Academy, were accounted for and safe, authorities said afterward.
The gun violence that shook the Islamic centre and the close-knit surrounding community surely came as a particular shock to Shanah’s mother, who fled Gaza for the United States in 2006. His father emigrated from Jordan to the US in 2015.
Header image: San Diego police officers stand blocking the road to the Islamic Center of San Diego following a shooting in southern California on May 18, 2026. — AFP
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