Jersey City gunman connected with a hate group

A pair who engaged police in an hourslong gun battle at a Jersey City kosher grocery store before being killed had targeted the store, officials said on Wednesday. The man reportedly was linked to a hate group and had published anti-Semitic posts online before the attack.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said on Wednesday at a news conference that surveillance footage from the city's closed-circuit cameras and security cameras in the store made it clear "that these two individuals targeted the kosher grocery location" where they opened fire and sparked the gun battle with police on Tuesday afternoon.

The shootout lasted more than one hour before police killed the two suspects at about 2:30 pm. The New York Times said officials had identified the two assailants as David N. Anderson, 47, and his girlfriend, Francine Graham, 50.

Authorities also described the pair as prime suspects in the killing of Michael Rumberger, a 34-year-old Uber driver in nearby Bayonne, whose body was found on Saturday in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car.

Anderson, a four-year veteran of the Army reserve, had spent more than a year in jail after pleading guilty to a weapons charge from more than a decade ago, according to court records, The New York Times reported.

The newspaper said that Anderson was linked to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement and had published anti-Semitic posts online, according to an unnamed law enforcement official.

The Black Hebrew Israelite groups, which have no connection with mainstream Judaism, have been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks such movements, according to The New York Times.

Investigators had initially said the store was chosen at random and wasn't indicative of a hate crime.

The mayor and the city's public safety director, James Shea, haven't explicitly labeled the shooting an anti-Semitic attack and said they didn't know the specific motive.

Three bystanders who were inside the store when the shootout began were killed. They have been identified as Mindel Ferencz, 33, who ran the grocery store with her husband; Moshe Deutch, 24, a rabbinical student who lives in Brooklyn; and Miguel Douglas, 49, who was believed to have worked at the store.

One other person inside the store was wounded but managed to escape, according to police.

Asked if any of the civilians were accidentally shot by police, Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly said: "We think that this was all bad-guy fire."

Law enforcement sources said Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, 40, spotted a stolen U-Haul van linked to the killing in Bayonne this past weekend. Seals tried to question the van's two occupants at Bayview Cemetery. He was shot in the head by at least one of the suspects, police said.

The two shooters then fled to the supermarket several blocks away.

Investigators found a note with apparent religious writing inside the van the suspects had driven to the market, TV channel NBC and the New York Post reported. Police also found a live pipe bomb inside the vehicle, according to The New York Times.

aiheping@chinadaily.com