An interview with Dayton native Brian Horwitz

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Since Sunday, June 1, Brian Horwitz has given interviews to 20 news outlets including ABC, CNN, NewsNation, Scripps News, The Denver Post and the Dayton Daily News. The native Daytonian, who has lived in Denver for three years, arrived at the scene of the firebombing of Run for Their Lives participants in Boulder and recorded videos of a defiant Mohamed Sabry Soliman — accused of hurling two Molotov cocktails at the group— before police arrived. Run for Their Lives is a global movement that holds walks and runs each week to increase awareness about the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.

Horwitz aided burn victims in front of the Boulder County Historic Courthouse and continued to record videos to document the terror attack until police apprehended Soliman. Fifteen people, including a Holocaust survivor, were injured in the attack according to local authorities. Horwitz attended Hillel Academy Jewish day school in Dayton through sixth grade and graduated from Northmont High School. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I can’t imagine what you’re going through.
Everyone keeps on telling me, “There’s going to be trauma for you.” I’m waiting for it to really hit me. I’m still processing everything. I feel an elevated sense of connection to what happened. I feel like it’s my responsibility to know as much as I can of what’s going on. And I have a vested interest in the victims.

You must have been among the very first to put out images and video of the attack.
I think so. I think there were three people recording. I was even debating putting it on the Internet because my mother-in-law called me immediately and said she would rather I not, for safety.

And when I got home from Boulder later that day, I looked at social media and so many people were getting it wrong. And there are some people who are even saying that it was Israeli protesters fighting pro-Palestinians that were there peacefully. So I was like, I have to get this out there.

Can you share exactly what happened?
My niece and nephew are visiting from Florida and my wife and two toddlers and I were all eating lunch (outside) after a hike that we went up to Boulder for. We went to this food hall that’s maybe 100 yards from the old courthouse. We saw the Run for Their Lives walk going down the street, and then they curled back around, came back up past us.

But about five, 10 minutes after, there was a woman who ran over across the street that started talking to some people saying she saw someone throwing flames at people. I immediately expected the worst at that point and understood that it was probably people attacking this group. And so I hopped the gate, I ran over to the courthouse square.

There’s a large group of people on the street watching everything happen, and 25 to 30 people inside the square. It was kind of limited to the Run for Their Life participants and maybe some friends that may have come in to help. There were screams, yells of “Where are the police? Where are the ambulances?”

I started to look for where the attacker was and understand what was going on, because I obviously wanted to stay away from anyone who had a gun or anything. I had no idea what weapons he was using. I looked on the ground and I saw an exploded Molotov cocktail or exploded bottle really, that was all charred.

And then there’s the attacker, pacing back and forth right in front of the old courthouse, a small patch of grass that was already on fire as well. And he was erratic, holding two carafes with a red cloth coming out of it with a clear liquid. It smelled like gasoline all throughout.

He was saying, “F—ing Zionists. You kill my people, I kill you.” He was saying, pointing at different people, “You’re a killer. You’re a killer. How many children need to die? I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.” I locked eyes with his sunglasses at one point when he said that, as I was trying to back away.

I just took out my phone to try and record him because I figured, the worst that could happen to me or the worst that could happen, in my opinion, is that this guy gets away with something like this. I wanted to make sure that we had video evidence of what he looked like.

I didn’t want to be insensitive and record the whole thing and not do anything to help. Then I overheard people again saying, “Where are the police?” Someone said that people have been trying to get through, but it just rings and rings. So I tried calling the police. After a couple attempts, I got through and they said that everyone’s been calling them, and they have a ton of people on the way.

I remember thinking to myself on one hand, this is incredibly dangerous. I need to keep my distance from the guy. But my kids and my wife were just a block away. What can I do safely?

I ran over to the woman who is the Holocaust survivor, burning from head to toe. I was seeing her nearly extinguished at that point. Everyone was patting her down. I asked where can I get more buckets of water? Because people were coming over from a restaurant with a huge bucket of water, ice. They’re putting that on her.

Six other victims that I saw were lying around, sitting around, walking around in shock. I got one of the restaurant buckets and someone pointed me to the running fountain with recycled water right behind me. I started jumping in there and just grabbing water and passing it back and forth to different people.

There was one man, probably in his early 60s, who was walking around with skin hanging off of his leg, his upper thigh. He ended up sitting down. He was the first person I tried to help.

And then I went over to the other side of the sidewalk and there were two elderly women, both probably in their mid to late 70s. One wasn’t burned as severely. Her friend was writhing around in agony and the first one said, “Help her, help her.” And so I was pouring water on her friend. She was lying face down on the grass. I poured water slowly on her. One pant leg was completely burned off. She had taken off the pants. They were stuck around her shoes. I helped with her pants, getting them off, getting her phone out, and poured water on her.

Meanwhile, the whole time, the attacker is still pacing over where he initially was, and a guy is still talking to him, empathizing with what he was saying, which was so weird, but I thought he was doing it to de-escalate the situation.

Another guy, he’s a local to Boulder and he’s friends with a lot of the people who were walking, he’s absolutely irate and runs up. He’s just absolutely berating the attacker and also the guy talking to the attacker, which was a bit antagonizing.

It felt like about 10, 15 minutes before the police and the paramedics got there, but based on the time stamps of my video, it was only three or four minutes. They apprehended the guy very quickly. Once they took control of the scene, he was still on the ground, I walked over. I called him a piece of s—. And then the police told us to walk away. They separated all of us to get our accounts of what happened.

Were you familiar with the Run for Their Lives walks?
Yes. I’m on their channel on WhatsApp. My wife and I have always wanted to go and attend one of those walks. She had a lot of trepidation of my going to any of them, especially right after Oct. 7th. Two times ago when we were in Boulder, we happened to cross the square when they were doing the end of their walk. And so we stood with them, and we sang Hatikvah and Shalom Aleichem.

How many other people were there, helping the victims when you were?
I was surprised. In the entire courtyard, there are maybe 15 to 20 people that were either victims or attending to them. A few others were sitting on benches that were elderly, who weren’t really victims, who are just sitting there watching. Really bizarre. But they were not trying to walk away from it. They were just sitting, removed from the action, maybe 100 feet away. And then there are the people who I think were part of the walk that were already there, that weren’t hurt.

Not many, if any, were helping. There may be two or three people helping that I would say were not Jewish, probably not affiliated in any way with those that were.

Weren’t you afraid the attacker would continue throwing Molotov cocktails when you were helping the victims?
It’s instinctual. I just remember thinking to myself, God, I wish I had a gun right now. This would be the reason that everyone says to have one. And maybe that’s why everyone else was lined up in the street and not rushing in. They’re just observing and waiting for the police to get there.

I think people that were in there were mostly part of the walk. They were not going to run away from their loved ones and the people they came there with, when their skin is burning off their bodies. And, because they couldn’t pull them away any farther. And if they could, they would have.

But in my mind, as long as he didn’t have a gun, I could theoretically run if I needed to, if I saw him take out a lighter and try and light a Molotov cocktail then and throw it.

And nobody tried to take him down before the police came?
No, it definitely crossed, I’m sure, a lot of our minds. For me, I wasn’t sure what else he had. I wasn’t there from the beginning. I didn’t know what was still in his pockets. I didn’t see him turn around at all. So I didn’t know if he had a knife or anything behind him. It was tough to decide on what to do. He was a very big guy. Even if I bull rushed him, there’s no telling what would have happened.

After you posted your account at X on June 1, two days later, you added on Facebook, “So many have taken my post and accounting of Sunday’s Boulder attack and twisted it into a domestic political argument.” What are people doing to the information you put up there?
It’s your standard keyboard warriors saying things, in some cases, that they never say in person. Far-right people or ultraconservatives are saying they should have shot the guy dead, that this is what happens when you’re in liberal, liberal Colorado and the Democrats have control of a state where nobody is concealing and carrying. Some people said this is what they deserve, they brought this on themselves. That kind of stuff.

And then there are other people who are just chiming in, typing “Free Palestine.”

I can’t help but feeling that we as Jews and even the Palestinians for that matter, are all pawns in this domestic political game in the last three years, and it’s just like nothing is ever going to change.

And so now you have opposite sides of the coin and people are kind of forced to identify with one or the other when it should never be. There’s so much nuance to this conflict. And it’s just miserable.