‘WE CAN’T LET HATE THREATEN US’
Shooting spree targeting New Jersey kosher market leaves six dead, Jewish community shaken
JERSEY CITY • The shooters began their killing at a Jersey City cemetery Tuesday, fatally shooting a veteran police officer before driving a stolen U-haul van to the front door of a family-owned kosher market and opening fire again — setting off an hourslong gun battle that would leave six people dead and the Jewish community on both sides of the Hudson River in mourning.
As the investigation continued, authorities directly involved in the case were hesitant to identify a motive for the two suspects, whose bodies were recovered among the hundreds of shell casings beside the store owner, a bystander and an employee.
But Jewish leaders were quick to call the attack an act of hate, and both Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made public statements condemning anti-semitism.
Fulop went so far as to say that video evidence from the shooting made it “clear” the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket was “targeted” by the shooters, whom authorities identified Wednesday afternoon as David Anderson and Francine Graham.
“It breaks my heart to see what happened yesterday,” Fulop said. “I used the term anti-semitism, and I do believe it is a hate crime. I do believe that the information that we have at this time supports that.”
On Wednesday, citing police sources, the New York Times reported that investigators found a “manifesto-style” note left in the U-haul truck used by the suspects, along with a live pipe bomb.
The note, brief and “rambling,” is not believed to suggest a motive. Earlier, however, the Times reported that one suspect had posted anti-semitic and anti-police messages online, and cited law enforcement officials as saying investigators believed the attack was motivated by those sentiments.
The suspect Anderson, the Times reports, appears to be linked to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.
According to investigators, Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, a 15-year police veteran and father of five, approached a U-haul van at around noon Tuesday because it had been reported stolen and linked to a homicide case. It’s unclear whether one or both of the shooters fired at Seals, but authorities said he was killed near Bayview Cemetery.
Fulop told reporters the shooters then drove to the kosher market five minutes away. Surveillance footage from street cameras shows the van pull up slowly and stop in the middle of the road, Fulop said. A male emerged with two rifles, he said, and “began firing from the street into the facility.”
Officers working nearby responded at about 12:30 p.m. and were met with high-powered rifle fire, authorities said. For hours, police and the suspects exchanged gunshots, forcing hundreds of children in nearby schools to be on lockdown late into the afternoon. Two other officers were shot and later released from the hospital.
At 3:25 p.m., an armoured police vehicle drove into the store, and 22 minutes later the shootout was over, authorities said. Officials found the bodies of five people inside the store.
On Wednesday afternoon, two of the bystanders killed in the shooting were identified as Mindy Ferencz, who owned the supermarket with her husband, and Moshe Deutsch, the 24-year-old son of a United Jewish Organizations board member.
“We can’t let the horrible hate go on and threaten us,” the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn said in a statement. “It’s too late already. The hate that springs up all over, now cut short lives so close to home.”
In their statement, the UJO called on officials to create task forces between law enforcement, community organizations and Jewish leaders to “foster love, stop hate and intercept and take action against haters before it’s too late.”
Fulop, who is Jewish, said “hate and anti-semitism have never had a place” in Jersey City. In a statement Wednesday, de Blasio said the shooting “confirms that a growing pattern of violent anti-semitism has now turned into a crisis for our nation.”
The third bystander killed at the store was an employee whom authorities identified as Miguel Douglas. But in a Bergen Record report he was named as Miguel Jason Rodriquez, an Ecuadorian immigrant, according to the church’s pastor.
Police confirmed they found a pipe bomb in the U-haul van.