SAN DIEGO, California — Nine-year-old Odai Shanah had no idea what was happening when his teacher suddenly rushed him and his classmates into a closet.
Then the shots started.
Twelve to 16 gunshots rang out just beyond the walls of the Islamic Center of San Diego, where Odai attends school at the Bright Horizon Academy. He and his classmates huddled together in the dark, trembling, as the sound of gunfire echoed through the building.
“My legs were shaking and my hands and my head were like hurting a lot,” Odai said hours after the attack. “I felt like a rock.”
A School Day That Turned Into a Nightmare
The shooting erupted late Monday morning at the Islamic Center, a complex that houses both a mosque and an Islamic day school attended by dozens of children.
Police said two teenage suspects opened fire outside the mosque, killing three men affiliated with the Islamic Center. Among the dead was a security guard who authorities say put himself in harm’s way and prevented even more lives from being lost.
The gunmen never made it inside the building.
After the shooting stopped, a police SWAT team moved room to room through the complex. Odai recalled hearing officers shout from outside the classroom door.
“‘OK, open up,’ then they opened the door,” he said.
‘We Saw a Bunch of Bad Stuff’
As police escorted the children out of the building, Odai saw things no child should ever have to see.
“We saw a bunch of bad stuff, people laying down and yeah, bad stuff,” he said quietly — acknowledging that he was describing the victims’ bodies.
Officers directed the students to raise their hands and form a line as SWAT teams secured the building. Younger children from other classrooms were lined up nearby and evacuated separately.
All students at the Bright Horizon Academy were accounted for and confirmed safe, authorities said.
A Family That Knows Trauma
For Odai’s mother, Monday’s attack carried a particular weight.
She fled Gaza in 2006 — during months of deadly clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants — and rebuilt her life in Southern California over the past two decades. Odai’s father emigrated from Jordan to the United States in 2015.
The family gave full permission for Odai to be interviewed by name and to share his account in his own words.
After surviving a warzone as a child herself, his mother now watched her American-born son process violence on what was supposed to be an ordinary school day.
A Community Left Shaken
The attack has sent shockwaves through San Diego’s close-knit Muslim community.
The two teen suspects took their own lives several blocks from the mosque after the shooting, police said. Investigators are still working to determine a motive.
For Odai, the memory of that closet — the shaking hands, the muffled gunshots, the walk past the fallen bodies — is not something he will forget easily.
But he made it out. And so did every other child in that building.
Have you or someone you know been affected by this tragedy? Share your thoughts and prayers for the San Diego community in the comments below.
