The Jersey City police officer killed in a deadly rampage was shot in the Bay View Cemetery just before two shooters turned their attention to a kosher supermarket a mile away, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal confirmed Wednesday during a press conference.
Joseph Seals, a 15-year veteran of the Jersey City Police Department and a married father of five, died in the incident, authorities said. Grewal, who stood before a line of federal and state officials, detailed the moments after the officer’s death at the news conference. He said a suspect, identified as David Anderson, left the cemetery in a white U-Haul van, accompanied by Francine Graham, the second shooter identified in the incident.
Anderson reportedly stopped and parked the van across the street from the JC Kosher Supermarket. “Within seconds of arriving,” he got out of the van with a rifle, walked toward the supermarket, and open fired, Grewal said. Graham followed Anderson into the store, where they encountered four civilians and shot them, leaving Leah Mindel Ferencz, Miguel Douglas, and Moshe Deutsch dead, Grewal said. “The survivor was able to escape the store at the beginning of the incident, and we are not providing his name at this time,” Grewal said.
Less than 20 minutes into the encounter, someone discovered Seals’ body and called 911, Grewal said. Minutes later, Jersey City officers responded to the store, engaging the shooters, and “a long protracted shootout” followed. The shootout only ended when a police armored vehicle broke through the market’s entryway and officers discovered the slain bodies inside.
The attorney general didn’t confirm an earlier report from Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop that the market was targeted or that this was an anti-Semitic attack. “We’re not in the position at this time to say definitively why the suspects decided to stop in front of the supermarket and begin firing immediately,” Grewal said.
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He did say that authorities recovered “numerous firearms” from the scene and that they are processing ballistics evidence and a pipe bomb. Authorities are working to identify all available video footage from the incident. In the meantime, Grewal asked that the press and public “stick to the facts” to avoid creating “unnecessary panic in the community” and undermining the official investigation.
He said, “on a more personal note,” that he was born in Jersey City, where so many people from around the globe first stepped foot in the United States. He said the kosher supermarket is across the street from a Catholic school, is down the block from a Dominican bodega, and is on a street named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “It’s a city of Chinese grocers and Indian shopkeepers, and recent college graduates, all striving for a better life in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty,” Grewal said. ”Jersey City is an American city, a city that reflects the values and the strength of our nation and of the state that we all proudly call home.”