Texas rabbi recounts 'terrifying' escape from hostage situation

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said he felt he was facing a life-or-death situation and knew he had to take desperate measures to survive.

When a gun-wielding suspect grew frustrated and belligerent that his demands were not being met, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker felt he was facing a life-or-death situation, and he said he knew he had to take desperate measures if he and the two other hostages were going to survive.

"I guess you do what you have to do," Cytron-Walker said in an interview with CBS News on Monday morning, recounting the hours-long hostage standoff on Saturday at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.

Cytron-Walker said he was at the synagogue preparing for Shabbat services when the suspect, identified by the FBI as 44-year-old British citizen Malik Faisal Akram, knocked on a window of his temple near Fort Worth. Cytron-Walker invited him in for tea, thinking he was a troubled soul in need of prayer, the rabbi said.

"When I took him in, I stayed with him," Cytron-Walker said. "Making tea was an opportunity for me to talk with him, and in that moment I didn't hear anything suspicious."