Jersey City shootout was targeted attack on kosher deli, police say
Closed circuit cameras at the scene of a daytime shootout in Jersey City show the gunmen jump out of a van and begin firing into a Jewish market; Bryan Llenas reports from the scene.
Authorities have identified the victims from Tuesday's deadly shooting that rocked Jersey City, N.J., and left a police officer dead along with five others, including three civilians and two suspected shooters.
Jersey City police Detective Joseph Seals, 39, a married father of five, was on duty when he was fatally shot at the Bay View Cemetery before the suspects, identified as David N. Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, made their way to the JC Kosher Supermarket where an hours-long gun battle ensued.
Officials identified the bystanders killed inside the market as Mindy Ferencz, 31; Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49; and 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch. Another person was shot and survived.
Ferencz, 31, was the co-owner of the grocery store with her husband. They had three children, ages 11, 7 and 4. The couple had moved to Jersey City about three years ago to be part of a small Orthodox Jewish community in the area.
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Mier Ferencz, brother-in-law of Mindel Ferencz, called his sister-in-law "dedicated, a real mother and a real wife" on Wednesday.
David Niederman, the executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y., said the Ferencz family was among dozens of Hasidic families who moved from Williamsburg to Jersey City in the past few years.
"Mindel Ferencz, may she rest in peace, was a pioneer," said Niederman, who joined New York Mayor Bill de Blasio at a City Hall news conference Wednesday. "She and her husband were from the first people who moved to Jersey City who could not afford a home for their growing family and figured let’s go to places where it’s cheaper and I’ll make an example. I’ll go there. I’ll open a grocery store so that families can go and shop locally, and therefore growing the community."
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Rabbi Moshe Shapiro, who runs the New Jersey synagogue Chabad Lubavitch of Hoboken, said Ferencz was often behind the cash register at the deli.
“She was very sweet and very gentle,” he said, according to the New York Post.
He said: “Every Jewish business probably within two-square-miles came to this grocery at least once a day for lunch, because this is the only kosher spot around.”
Moshe Deutsch, 24, was a rabbinical student who lived in Williamsburg but was in the store the day of the shooting, Niederman said. He was the son of a well-known civic leader, Abraham Deutsch, de Blasio said.
He helped his father organize a food drive that fed around 2,000 families during Passover in the last several years.
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This undated photo provided by Chai Lifeline shows Moshe Deutsch, who was killed Tuesday in Jersey City, N.J. Deutsch, a 24-year-old rabbinical student from Brooklyn, was one of three people who died when gunmen, targeting a kosher grocery where he was shopping, opened fire. (Chai Lifeline via AP)
"The little free time he had he was busy helping others," Niederman said.
A family friend, 56-year-old Moses Weiser, called him a "very studious kid" who helped a lot of people," the Post reported.
Rodriguez, 49, a store employee and father, was identified as the third victim. He was not Jewish, according to Niederman.
An immigrant from Ecuador, he was a “wonderful” and “special man” who “always talked about his family” and had aspirations of becoming an architect, Jersey City Hasidic community member Mark Silberstein told the New York Post.
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Authorities believe Anderson and Graham targeted the market and may have been involved in a separate killing in Bayonne, N.J. Both died in a shootout with police Tuesday. De Blasio and other New York officials have condemned the attack as anti-Semitic.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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