“Then this brother [Aziz] came over. He went after him, and he managed to overpower him, and that’s how we were saved,” Alabi said. “Otherwise, if he managed to come into the mosque, then we would all probably be gone.”
Aziz, originally from Afghanistan, said he had run outside of the mosque hoping to distract the attacker. He said the gunman ran back to his car to get another gun, and Aziz hurled the credit card machine at him.
He said he could hear his two youngest sons, aged 11 and 5, urging him to come back inside.
The gunman returned, firing, he said. Aziz then said he ran, weaving through cars parked in the driveway, which prevented the gunman from getting a clean shot. Then Aziz spotted a gun the gunman had abandoned and picked it up, pointed it and squeezed the trigger. It was empty.
