AG: Killers hated Jews, police
Official says attackers in New Jersey shooting had five guns
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — The two killers who stormed a kosher market in Jersey City were driven by hatred of Jewish people and law enforcement, New Jersey’s attorney general said Thursday, adding that the case is being investigated as domestic terrorism.
Attorney General Gurbir Grewal also said the man and woman had five guns, including an Ar-15-style rifle and a shotgun they were wielding when they burst into the store in an attack that left the scene littered with hundreds of shell casings. They had a pipe bomb in their van.
“The outcome would have been far, far worse” if not for the Jersey City police, Grewal said. Authorities noted that a Jewish school is next to the market, and a Catholic school sits across the street.
The attackers killed three people in the store, in addition to a police officer at a cemetery about a mile away, before dying in an hourslong gunbattle with police Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
“The evidence points toward acts of hate. I can confirm that we’re investigating this matter as potential acts of domestic terrorism fueled both by anti-semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” the attorney general said. He said social media posts, witness interviews and other evidence reflected the couple’s hatred of Jewish people and police.
Grewal noted that after killing three people in the store, the couple concentrated their fire on police and did not shoot at others.
Grewal said the attackers, David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, had expressed interest in a fringe religious group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose members often rail against Jewish and white people. But he said there was no evidence that they were members, and he added that the two were believed to have acted alone.
The pair brought their cache of weapons in a U-haul van they drove from Bay View Cemetery, where they shot and killed Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals, according to the attorney general.
Anderson fired away with the Ar15-style rifle as he entered the store, while Graham brought a 12-gauge shotgun into the shop. They also had handguns with a homemade silencer and a device to catch shell casings. In all, they had five guns — four recovered in the store, one in the van — in what Grewal called a “tremendous amount of firepower.”
Serial numbers from two of the weapons showed that Graham purchased them in Ohio in 2018, the attorney general said.
The victims killed in the store were Mindel Ferencz, 31; Moshe Deutsch, 24; and Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49. A fourth person in the store was shot and wounded, authorities said.
Members of New York’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community gathered Wednesday night for funerals for Ferencz and Deutsch. Thousands followed Ferencz’s casket through the borough of Brooklyn, hugging and crying.