Jersey City attack being investigated as domestic terrorism

The couple who burst into a kosher market in Jersey City with assault weapons appear to have acted alone even though they had expressed interest in a fringe religious group that often disparages whites and Jews, New Jersey officials said.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said the attack was driven by hatred of Jews and law enforcement and is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.

The two killers were armed with a variety of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a shotgun that they were wielding when they stormed into the store in an attack that left the scene littered with several hundred shell casings, broken glass and a community in mourning. A pipebomb was also found in a stolen U-Haul van.

Workmen replace a window that was broken by gunfire at the Sacred Heart school in Jersey City, N.J., Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. Investigators are looking to pinpoint what prompted a deadly attack on a Jewish market in Jersey City amid fears that it was motivated by anti-Semitism, as the nearby school reopened Thursday. (AP PhotoSeth Wenig)

"The outcome would have been far, far worse” if not for the Jersey City Police, Grewal said Thursday. Authorities noted that a Jewish school is next to the market, and a Catholic school is 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 Jews and police.

Police officers stand near the scene of a gun fight at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. Investigators are looking to pinpoint what prompted a deadly attack on the Jewish market in Jersey City amid fears that it was motivated by anti-Semitism, as a nearby school reopened Thursday. (AP PhotoSeth Wenig)

Grewal noted that after killing three people in the store, the couple concentrated their fire on police and did not shoot at others who happened to be on the streets.

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 Jews and whites. But he said there was no evidence so far that they were members, and 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.

Orthodox Jewish men mourn during the funeral service of Mindel Ferencz who was killed in a kosher market that was the site of a gun battle in Jersey City, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Ferencz, 31, and her husband owned the grocery store. The Ferencz family had moved to Jersey City from Brooklyn. (AP PhotoEduardo Munoz Alvarez)

The Tunnel2Towers organization, formed after Sept. 11 to support police officers killed in the line of duty, said Friday it would pay the mortgage of Seals, who left behind a wife and five children.

Director of Public Safety James Shea called Seals “the ultimate detective or officer we would point to to tell young officers, 'This is how you should behave.'" He said Friday that he doubted Seals would have been ambushed by the pair. Authorities haven't disclosed why Seals was in the cemetery or details of the confrontation that led to his death.

Anderson fired away with the AR-15-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.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, center, leaves after visiting a religious school the day after a shooting that left multiple dead at a kosher market adjacent to the school on Dec. 11, 2018, in Jersey City, NJ. Police killed two gunmen who had earlier killed an officer at a cemetery in Jersey City. (AP PhotoKevin Hagen).

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, who with her husband owned the grocery; 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there; and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49. A fourth person in the store was shot and wounded but managed to escape, authorities said.

Members of New York's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community gathered Wednesday night for funerals for Ferencz and Deutsch. Thousands of people, mostly men, followed Ferencz's casket through the streets of Brooklyn, hugging and crying.

Orthodox Jewish men carry the casket with Mindel Ferencz who was killed in a kosher market that was the site of a gun battle in Jersey City, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Ferencz, 31, who with her husband owned the grocery store. The Ferencz family had moved to Jersey City from Brooklyn. (AP PhotoEduardo Munoz Alvarez)

The bloodshed in the city of 270,000 people across the Hudson River from New York City spread fear through the Jewish community and weighed heavily on the minds of more than 300 people who attended a vigil Wednesday night at a synagogue about a mile from where the shootings took place.

In the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, 11 people were killed in an October 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last April, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue near San Diego, killing a woman and wounding a rabbi and two others.

People work to secure the scene of a shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. The mayor of a New Jersey city says gunmen targeted the kosher market during a shooting that killed six people Tuesday. (AP PhotoSeth Wenig)

Family members of Mindel Ferencz, who was killed at a kosher market that was the site of a gun battle, attend her funeral service in Jersey City, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Ferencz, 31, with her husband owned the grocery store. The Ferencz family had moved to Jersey City from Brooklyn. (AP PhotoEduardo Munoz Alvarez)

Officers stand outside of a vigil for the victims of a shooting in Jersey City, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Fears that a deadly shooting at a Jewish market was an anti-Semitic attack mounted as authorities recounted how a man and woman deliberately pulled up to the place in a stolen rental van with at least one rifle and got out firing. (AP PhotoEduardo Munoz Alvarez)

Orthodox Jewish men carry Moshe Deutsch's casket outside a Brooklyn synagogue following his funeral, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019 in New York. Deutsch was killed Tuesday in a shooting inside a Jersey City, N.J. kosher food market. (AP PhotoMark Lennihan)