New Jersey shootout has community on edge
Kosher supermarket was targeted; authorities searching for motive
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – A shooting spree that killed a police officer and three other people targeted a kosher market and could have been far more deadly had officers on patrol nearby not quickly intervened, city officials said Wednesday.
“We now know this did not begin with gunfire between police officers,” city Public Safety Director James Shea said. “It began with an attack on civilians in the store.”
In an afternoon news conference, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said a pipe bomb was recovered at the scene.
Grewal identified the victims as Mindy Ferenz, 32; Miguel Douglas, 49; and Moshe Deutsh, 24. Ferenz and Deutsh were members of an Orthodox community. Chabad Rabbi Moshe Schapiro said Ferenz and her husband owned the market.
Grewal said a fourth person in the
market, whom he did not name, escaped the attack.
Authorities suspect that the attackers, whom they identified as David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, gunned down police Detective Joe Seals about noon Tuesday at a cemetery before heading to the market a mile away. The two are also the lead suspects in the killing of a Jersey City man found beaten to death in the trunk of a car Saturday night.
Shea said surveillance video shows two people pull up in front of the JC Kosher Supermarket in a stolen van, slowly exit the vehicle armed with long guns and “immediately begin firing.” Shea, noting that the market is surrounded by schools and other stores, said the officers “heroically placed themselves in the line of fire.”
“Both of them received gunshot wounds as a result,” Shea said. Officers Ray Sanchez and Mariela Fernandez were treated at a hospital and released.
Shea and Mayor Steven Fulop declined to characterize the attack as an anti-Semitic hate crime. Multiple media outlets, including The New York Times, reported that one of the suspects published anti-Semitic posts on social media.
Grewal said the shooters’ motivation remains under investigation, and he urged the media not to speculate about any ideology that might have prompted the assault.
The attorney general highlighted the diversity of Jersey City and the area where the kosher supermarket sits next to a Catholic school and near a Dominican bodega.
“Yesterday that city came under attack,” he said. “Not just the city but the values this city stands for, and we will respond as we have responded in the past. And we recognize many in the community are coming together ... and showing that we are stronger than the hate that fueled this terrible tragedy.”
Fulop, in a tweet earlier, said anti-Semitism has no place in the city. “I’m Jewish and proud to live in a community like #JerseyCity that has always welcomed everyone,” Fulop said. “It is the home of #Ellis Island and has always been the golden door to America. Hate and anti-semitism have never had a place here in JC and will never have a place in our city.”
History ‘screaming at us’
Authorities warned about scams seeking to take advantage of the tragedy.
Craig Carpenito, U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, said fake GoFundMe pages have been set up purporting to raise money for victims’ relatives. He said no legitimate pages had been established as of Tuesday night.
“I can’t find the words for how disgusting this conduct is,” Carpenito said, urging those exposed to the fraud to contact the FBI.
Evan Bernstein, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he was waiting for details about the attack.
“The Jewish community is shaken,” Bernstein said.
Residents were rattled by the violence.
“I just think that everyone wants to leave,” said Khalis Harris, 37, who has lived in the neighborhood his entire life. “If it’s not yesterday’s shooting, it’ll be another one.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said two of the victims were borough natives. Authorities said anti-Semitic hate crimes have risen 22% in the city in 2019.
“History isn’t trying to talk to us right now – it’s screaming at us,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference. He warned Americans not to discount the possibility that a Holocaust could happen again: “It is not the distant past. It’s right here with us.”
Two hours of terror
Rabbi David Lederman, who spoke on behalf of the Jewish community, thanked de Blasio for “having the courage” to call the shooting an act of antiSemitism. Lederman fought back tears as he recounted the lives of the Jewish victims.
“May all communities, including us in the Jewish community, feel that we are safe,” Lederman said.
Still unclear is the connection between the bodega shooting and an earlier shootout at a cemetery. Police said Tuesday night that the suspects killed Seals in the cemetery in another section of the city of 270,000 people before driving the van to the bodega.
Shea did not address that information Wednesday. Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly said Tuesday that the officer was trying to stop some “bad guys” near Bayview Cemetery.
Seals, a married father of five, was part of a department tasked to get guns off the city’s streets. Seals was on duty and in plainclothes Tuesday when he was shot by at least one of the suspects, Kelly said.
The suspects then drove a stolen rental van about a mile and engaged police in the shootout from inside the market. The shootout lasted two hours before police killed the suspects around 2:30 p.m.
The suspects and three other people were found dead inside the store.
Bystanders were struck by rounds thought to have been fired by the suspects, police said. The store is in a section of the city that has become home to about 100 Orthodox Jewish families.
The front of the bodega was in ruins. Bullet holes riddled the walls and windows of Sacred Heart School that face the market.
New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, the brother of James Shea, said Jewish sites throughout the city are getting extra security.
“There is an escalation” in anti-Semitic hate crimes, Shea said. “It’s ignorance, it’s hate and it has to be denounced.”
Zurita reports for NorthJersey.com. Bacon reported from McLean, Va. Contributing: Deena Yellin, Monsy Alvarado, Kristie Cattafi, Terrence T. McDonald, James M. O’Neill, NorthJersey.com; Grace Hauck, USA TODAY
“I just think that everyone wants to leave. If it’s not yesterday’s shooting, it’ll be another one.” Khalis Harris, 37, who has lived in the neighborhood his whole life