Youngest Poway survivor celebrates her 9th birthday
Noya Dahan and her uncle were wounded when a white nationalist burst into their synagogue and opened fire, killing one and injuring three.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFNoa Dayan, the eight-year-old Israeli wounded in the shooting at a California Chabad synagogue, wanted her picture shared on social media to show that she was okay.(photo credit: SCREENSHOT FROM TWITTER)
Noya Dahan, the youngest victim of the shooting that last April targeted a Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, celebrated her ninth birthday, NBC San Diego reported on Sunday. Noya and her uncle Almog Peretz, 31, were wounded when 19-year-old white nationalist John Earnest burst into the Chabad of Poway where the two were praying and opened fire. He killed congregant Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60. The rabbi of the synagogue, Yisroel Goldstein, was also injured in the attack. The Dahan family moved from Israel to the United States to escape the ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza on her southern Israeli town, after a rocket hit their house when Noya was seven months old. "It was not a good situation in which to bring up kids," Noya's father Israel Dahan explained after the shooting. According to the report, the birthday party took place at the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe and it was a surprise for the little girl. "Thank you for coming and making this happen. I don't know what to say honestly," she said. Noya still has two pieces of shrapnel in her leg and needs to be monitored for the injuries, the report added. "She might need to do a little surgery. Just taking the shrapnel out because it started getting infected and painful for her," her father told NBC. "But other than that, she is fine."
