One of the first people on the scene of Tuesday’s deadly attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem was Canadian doctor Joyce Morel.
The Toronto-born and bred physician, lives just about a minute’s drive from the Kehilat Bnei Torah Synagogue, where four rabbis — three Israeli-Americans and one from British-Israeli — were killed in a horrific attack, while a critically wounded police officer succumbed to his injuries late Tuesday night.
Seven others sustained injuries, including another police officer and one Canadian.
READ MORE: Canadian among injured in Jerusalem synagogue attack
A volunteer with the emergency medical service United Hatzalah of Israel, Morel told Global News she got a call on her radio about the attack at about 7 a.m. local time. She grabbed her medical kit and rushed to the scene.
“When I got there, the street was quiet. There was one man sitting on the sidewalk, right outside the synagogue, bleeding from his head,” she said in phone interview Tuesday evening.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
“His back was open right through to inside his chest,” she said, explaining how the man had been hacked with a meat cleaver.
As she tried to treat the man, police ran out of the synagogue shouting, “Move, move, move. There’s still shooting going on.”
Morel helped the injured man to safety “about 200 feet away,” and stayed with him until he was taken away in an ambulance. She said she learned the man survived the attack.
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Morel, who moved to Jerusalem with her husband two years ago, said “it’s an honour and privilege” to work with United Hatzalah (rescue in Hebrew).
According to its website, United Hatzalah has more than 2,300 volunteers throughout Israel.
But, what makes the group’s service so vital is its use of GPS technology and medically-equipped motorcycles called “ambucycles.”
Morel said the ambucycles have cut emergency response time down to a couple of minutes “anywhere in Jerusalem.”
“That’s way, way faster than the regular ambulances,” she said. “The traffic here is unbelievable. It’s just so crowded.”
While Morel and United Hatzalah respond to all sorts of emergencies, this is not the first time she has had to rush to the scene of a terror attack.
“There was another terrorist attack about three weeks ago, not far from my office,” she explained. “Two people were killed and there were a number of very seriously injured people also.”
Despite the violence and unrest in Jerusalem in recent weeks, Morel said she lives life “day-to-day” as she would in any other situation.
With files from Kam Razavi
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