‘I stood between two victims of synagogue attack’

A Jewish worshipper has described the moment he stood between two of the victims of the Manchester synagogue attack as they all tried to stop the killer from getting inside.

Michael Goldstone was one of about 200 people at a vigil on Thursday to commemorate a week since the atrocity, which left two people dead and two and three others in hospital.

Mr Goldstone was one of the people helping to barricade the synagogue’s doors as Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, aimed to continue his attack inside.

He told how Adrian Daulby, 53 and Yoni Finlay, 39, were on either side of him also helping to hold the door closed while armed police targeted Al-Shamie outside.

Mr Daulby died after he was hit by a police bullet while Mr Finlay is continuing to recover in hospital following surgery after also being hit.

Mr Goldstone said: “When Yoni was hit he turned around and says I think I’ve been shot and he fell down on the floor slightly unconscious.

“And then when I saw the state of Adrian, I knew in my mind it wasn’t good news but I was still holding on to the door more than anything else.”

Mr Goldstone said one of the police bullets missed him by “maybe four or five inches”.

“But I didn’t care about that. All I cared about was nobody was coming in,” he said.

Mr Goldstone said he had been plagued by nightmares since the attack, which he said he “cannot get out of my mind”.

“I was behind the doors at the window and he was looking face-to-face with me, I came face-to-face with this guy,” he said.

“It will cow me for quite a bit. It’s very very difficult for me.”

But he said he was proud to see how many people had come out to support the Jewish community at the vigil.

“The whole of the Jewish community In North Manchester has shown up, which shows you how much we’re all together in fighting this horrible situation,” Mr Goldstone said.

Addressing the crowd, Mark Levy, the chief executive of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region, said: “To those who actively wish to do us harm, we are not going anywhere.

“We are British and we are Jewish. This is our country.

“We have contributed to this country an immense amount over the last 200 years and this will continue.”

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham praised the response of emergency services during the attack.

He said a lot of work had been done to improve responses to such attacks following the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, including training firefighters in responding to marauding terrorist attacks.

“The response of our emergency services was of a different order to the night of 2017, where there was individual bravery but the coordination wasn’t there,” He told BBC Radio Manchester.

“We had a much more coordinated response to last week’s attack.”