Jersey City Shooting Targeted Kosher Market

At least six people, including one police officer, were killed in a firefight in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Tuesday. The incident, which began as a shooting near a cemetery, then developed into a shootout between police and two suspects who barricaded themselves inside a kosher grocery store.

Five people were killed at the kosher market, police said. Those included the two attackers. The three victims inside the store have not been publicly identified by officials. The suspects shot law enforcement officer Joseph Seals at the cemetery, and he died from injuries sustained in the incident, according to officials.

So far, the authorities have not identified the attackers. One attacker published anti-Semitic and anti-police posts online, and investigators believe the attack was motivated by those sentiments, The New York Times reported.

Investigators also found a note inside the van of the attackers. The note was described as brief and rambling and did not articulate a motive for the shooting. Investigators also found a pipe bomb inside the van, officials said. Details of the online posts and the note are still under review.

Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, told the media on Wednesday that surveillance footage indicated the attackers had targeted a kosher supermarket where most of the carnage unfolded. Fulop said that after the attackers shot Seals near the cemetery, they drove deliberately to the market, approximately a mile away.

The kosher market, the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket, is in the city’s Greenville neighborhood. Local authorities say Greenville now hosts a growing community of Hasidic Jewish families, many of whom moved to Jersey City in recent years from the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn.

For more information on protecting religious and other communities, see the Security Management article “Communal Protection.”