The Poway Station of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said on Twitter that the shooting happened around 11:30 a.m. local time at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California, about 25 miles north of San Diego.
A man was taken into custody, officials said. The gunman, identified as a white 19-year-old man, used an AR-style weapon and opened fire on the people inside the synagogue, Sheriff William Gore of San Diego County said at a news conference.
As the man was fleeing, an off-duty Border Patrol agent fired a weapon but did not hit him, the sheriff said.
A young woman and two adult men were in stable condition. An older woman died.
Authorities did not discuss a motive during the news conference.
Nancy Levanoni, 80, who has been going to the synagogue for 17 years, said, “Apparently God was looking after us because we got there a little later than normal.”
Services started at 10 a.m. and Levanoni and her husband, Menachem Levanoni, 81, the former president of the synagogue, got there closer to 11:15 a.m.
“As we were getting out of the car, we heard gunshots,” she said. “I thought maybe someone was stepping on those little plastic bubbles.”
Her husband, who had been an Israeli soldier, said he thought they were gunshots.
They headed toward the synagogue, where Nancy Levanoni saw the rabbi bleeding from a finger, where he appeared to have been shot. He was very upset. One of her closest friends was on the floor.
Nancy Levanoni learned that her friend had been shot and was the most seriously injured. Someone was trying to help her.
Speaking of her friend, she said: “She can’t do enough for people around her. If you are sick, she brings you food. She’s a wonderful, wonderful person.”
The pair had been friends for 17 years and the victim was very active in the synagogue, she said.
On Saturday, for the last day of Passover, there was a special service known as Yizkor, to remember people’s dead parents at the synagogue.
The shooting at Chabad of Poway comes exactly six months after the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. On Oct. 27, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire inside that synagogue, killing at least 11 congregants and wounding four police officers.
Walter Vandivort, who lives in the neighborhood of the Poway synagogue, said he heard gunshots while he was indoors. He said he was unsure how many he heard.
He described the neighborhood as a “peaceful, middle-class” area that had never seen this kind of violence in the decades he has lived there.
“I see the Orthodox Jews walking to their synagogue and we’ve never had a problem,” he said.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez said on Twitter: “Another tragedy in a place of worship ... Another instance in America where people went to pray and find peace, only to be met with violence and bloodshed ... My heart goes out to the victims of the Chabad of Poway shooting today.”
Rep. Mike Levin said in a tweet that he was closely monitoring the situation. “We must do more to address the hate behind this attack and end the epidemic of gun violence in this country,” he wrote.
The Chabad of Poway was established in 1986. It approaches the Torah in a “modern, relevant context,” according to its website.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.