A few hours after having his Ramadan Suhoor meal, Hourari Benkada was taking the subway to work on Tuesday morning as usual when a gunman set off smoke bombs and opened fire on a New York City subway during morning rush hour.
The young Muslim man of Algerian origin was shot in the knee while trying to shield a pregnant woman as chaos erupted around him.
“All you see is smoke, black smoke bomb going off, and then people bum rushing to the back. This pregnant woman was in front of me. I was trying to help her,” Benkada told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″ on Tuesday night.
“I didn’t know there were shots at first, I just thought it was a black smoke bomb. She said, ‘I’m pregnant with a baby.’ I hugged her, and then the bum rush continued. I got pushed, and that’s when I got shot in the back of my knee.”
Benkada said he reacted on instinct when the woman told him, “Oh my God, I’m pregnant!”
“I was just focused on the pregnant woman and that is when I got struck in the leg. I was just on my way to work,” he said.
Hard Time
Police arrested Frank James, 62, in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood on Wednesday afternoon.
James is suspected of setting off smoke grenades and firing a handgun 33 times on a crowded N train traveling toward the 36th Street station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
The attack left 29 people injured, including 10 who were shot, though none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening, officials said.
Benkada, a housekeeping manager at the New Yorker Hotel, said bullet hit him in the back of his knee and came out the other side.
Doctors told him the bullet grazed his kneecap. He is expected to be able to walk on his own after several weeks on crutches.
Benkada was still trying to process what had happened as he recovered at home.
“I don’t think I can ever ride the train again,” he told New York Times.
Allah tells us that “If anyone saved a life it would be as if he saved the life of the whole humanity.” Quran 5:32
What Benkada did falls in line with similar heroic acts done by some other Muslims.
In September 2021, a Muslim man in North Leigh, Oxfordshire, was praised for successfully saving his neighbors when fire started in their house.
Azz Mahmoud, a 37-year-old Muslim youth worker in Oldham, performed CPR for the first time ever to save a man’s life.
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