Teacher recounts attack at Michigan's Temple Israel: "I knew something was wrong"
Lindsay Kalt's work day as a reading specialist at Temple Israel ended at noon like usual last Thursday.
Like always, she walked into her 4-year-old son's preschool class to say goodbye before leaving the building, but what happened right after that, she says, she will never forget.
"I took some pictures of the kids playing because they were so cute for some of the other parents, and I said goodbye to my son. I told him I'd pick him up at 2:30 for his swimming lesson, and I headed out the door."
Authorities say 41-year-old Ayman Mohamad Ghazali rammed his truck into an entrance at Temple Israel and exchanged gunfire with security officers before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. During the shooting, authorities said the truck caught on fire.
Kalt says she heard the crash moments after she walked out of the building and saw smoke starting to rise from the building.
"And then I heard a lot of sirens, and I saw officers, law enforcement running towards the building, and at that point I knew something was wrong," she said. "I'm a teacher and a mom, so my first instinct was to run back into the building. I was showing the officers my rainbow ECC badge, and I was saying I have to go back in, my son is in that building, our students are in that building."
Unable to enter the building, Kalt said she was outside experiencing her worst nightmare.
"A few minutes later, I honestly don't know how much time we heard the first shots, and I remember cause I counted six one after the other," she said.
While outside seeing the building, her son, her students and her colleagues were inside the building as it filled with smoke, surrounded by law enforcement. Kalt rushed over to the officers so that they could communicate with the teachers still inside.
"I just started reading what was happening in the group chat, what teachers were seeing, what teachers were saying, what they were hearing. I mean, they were doing everything right," she said.
Kalt said she began to see children running from the building, and seeing those young kids OK brought a sense of relief. But it took what felt like forever to reconnect with her kid and learn he had been carried out of a window and brought to Shenandoah Country Club across the street.
"My son's class was one of the first five classes in Shenandoah, and I got to hold him, and I got to know he was OK," she said.
Kalt said she then spent the next few hours accounting for every single one of those 100-plus students who were inside Temple Israel, and when she realized everyone was safe, she broke down.
"And they got to the last page, and we knew we had them all, and I just couldn't feel my legs anymore," she said.
Kalt and one of her best friends then took their kids to a 7-Eleven for snacks. She says they don't know yet the enormity of what they went through.
"The only thing my son said when we got home was, 'I don't need to do that drill again.' He was carried out of a window by a police officer. He doesn't have any idea of the horrors that were going on because he was being so well taken care of by his teachers," Kalt said.
Kalt says she and all of the other families have received an overwhelming amount of support and love since the attack.