Valley Family Survives Blast

Alice and Leo Howard of Encino and their two grandsons were eating a falafel lunch at Mahane Yehuda market here and starting on dessert when two explosions rocked the market.

“We were eating cookies,” said grandson Adam Blitz, 14, also of Encino. “I heard the boom and thought it was a sonic boom. Then I heard another boom and felt the heat and heard people yelling, so I started running.”

Friends’ sons who where acting as their unofficial guides, Itamar and Tzvika Szymonowicz, were injured in the blast.

“Our two friends’ sons were just covered with blood,” said Alice Howard. “There were big holes in one child’s arm and a big hole in the other child’s chest.”

The Howards’ other grandson, 15-year-old Yoni Howard of Tarzana, was injured in the thigh by a shard of glass but carried 10-year-old Itamar to safety.

Both Israeli boys were hospitalized, and Itamar was placed in intensive care with a chest wound.

“I never heard anything so loud in all my life,” Alice Howard said of the explosion. “I’m an American. What do I know about terrorism?

“I’m one of these nuts that likes to go to action films,” she said as the family tried to settle into sleep early today. “I don’t think I’ll ever go to an action film again. I mean, it was real.”