Survivors Reflect on Jerusalem Bulldozer Rampage

JERUSALEM, July 3, 2008 — -- There was the bandaged man in the shattered bus who helped a mother and child escape another strike by a murderous bulldozer driver. And there was the door of a crumpled car that was wrenched open to snatch a baby moments before the bulldozer ran over it and flattened the vehicle.

A day after Jerusalem was terrorized by the killer bulldozer that killed three people and injured at least 45, tales of heroism emerged from the carnage.

Shani Sinai and her baby daughter, Ophir, were riding the bus on Jaffa Street in downtown Jerusalem and were puzzled by people running frantically outside the bus.

"I thought they wanted to come in," she said to reporters at the hospital after the attack, "until I saw the bulldozer headed toward us from the other side."

Behind the wheel of the massive construction vehicle was Hosam Dwayyat, a resident of a Palestinian village at the outskirts of Jerusalem.

The bulldozer's impact lifted the bus like a toy.

"When it hit the bus, we were flipped over on the side and people fell on us," Sinai said. "It was a shocking experience."

Glass shattered and sprayed when the bus hit the sidewalk.

"We were simply crushed beneath it," Sinai said. "The glass cut us, and it was so shocking to see people crushed."

A policewoman broke the back window and people began to escape. Sinai said that the people on the bus helped save her and her baby.

"Two people came our way, one of them was in an orthopedic bandage," she said.

"I asked him, you, in your state are helping me? He was really wonderful and I didn't have a chance to thank him."

Jeremy Aronson, 20, was passing through Jaffa Street when the attack occurred. He saw the bulldozer strike a car and ran to see if he could save the life of the woman in it.

However, the 33-year-old mother, Batsheva Unterman, was instantly killed when the bulldozer slammed her car.

Her 5-month-old daughter, Efrat, was sitting, silent, in the car.

"I saw the woman dead already in the car," Aronson told ABC News, "and I saw a car seat of a baby, but I didn't think there was a baby in it because it was not crying."

Outside, Aronson said that people were screaming that there was a baby inside the car.

Aronson and two other people pulled away the heavy, bent car door to rescue the baby trapped inside.

Minutes later, Dwayyat reversed the bulldozer and drove over the car.

"They shot him [the attacker] while he was on top of the car," Aronson said. "Where the baby was, the wheel of the tractor was just on top. Had we not taken the baby out, she would have been dead by now."

Throughout the ordeal, Aronson said that the baby did not make noise at all. "The mother was lying five meters from the baby, dead," he said. "The woman holding the baby was crying, but the baby was still silent."

Dwayyat is reportedly not aligned with any terrorist organization, despite the various militant groups that have claimed responsibility for the attack.

But the attack has unnerved many.

Aronson, a British citizen, is in the process of moving to Israel. After Wednesday's attack, he said his parents now want him to come home.

Aronson said he couldn't eat or sleep after the attack but insisted that his plans have not changed.

"I want to stay," he said. "I like Israel. But it's hard."

As for Shani Sinai, she was happy to be alive. "We wish everybody a lot of health," she said. "We hope that they won't be afraid, so that they will continue to live."