POWAY, Calif. (KGTV) - Almog Peretz said it was hard, but he couldn’t stop himself from going to the arraignment of the man accused of shooting him.
“I wanted to see him,” said Peretz, who had been hit by shrapnel in the shooting at the Chabad of Poway on Saturday morning.
He wanted to get a better look at the person he had only seen amid the chaos.
“The last time I [saw] him, I [saw] something terrible,” he said.
In court, he saw a young man who avoided looking into the crowd of people packed into the courtroom.
“I don’t understand. He’s 19 years old,” remarked Peretz.
When asked if he could ever forgive the suspect, Peretz responded, “I don’t hate him. I think it’s something stupid.”
Still, that doesn’t mean he’s not traumatized. Peretz says he can’t stop the memories from coming back to him. And his leg still hurts because the shrapnel is still inside.
If there is anything he wished he could have told the gunman before he opened fire it would be to “love people. All the people. You have to love people.”
Adding, “respect people and they give you back respect. They give you back love and that’s it.”
