Two remorseless, heavily armed killers specifically targeted a kosher supermarket for their carnage, coolly executing three innocent people inside the Jersey City, N.J., store before they were gunned down to end a terrifying three-hour firefight, officials said Wednesday.
Murder suspects David Anderson and Francine Graham were the partners in hate behind the Tuesday killing spree that started with the murder of a highly regarded Jersey City police detective and ended with five bodies found inside the JC Kosher Supermarket, authorities said.
Both suspects were killed, along with the trio of victims trapped inside the store _ one of them a young Jewish mother of three. Anderson, 47, and Graham, 50, were wanted for the weekend murder of an Uber driver found stuffed in the trunk of his car in Bayonne, N.J., officials said.
Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals was shot and killed after spotting the pair in a stolen U-Haul in a city graveyard.
A chilling 45-second video clip showed Anderson exiting the driver's side and almost immediately opening fire on the store, following closely behind by Graham. Pedestrians on the sidewalk run for their lives as the gunshots begin, and one man sprints to safety after somehow escaping the supermarket _ surviving despite a bullet wound.
"This remains a very fluid and fast-moving investigation," said New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.
Both New York City Mayor de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo denounced the killings as premeditated and anti-Semitic, even as New Jersey officials declined to go beyond calling the shootings "a targeted attack."
"It was an act of terror," said de Blasio said at a City Hall press conference where a Wednesday moment of silence was held to honor victims Moshe Deutsch, 24, and Leah "Mindy" Ferencz, 31 _ a pair of Brooklyn natives.
"It was violent. It was directed. There is still a lot we need to know ... but it is enough to tell us that this was an act of hate and an act of terror."
Both the mayor and the governor increased security around New York's synagogues and other Jewish establishments.
Anderson, a one-time member of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, joined Graham in leaving a rambling religious manifesto inside the stolen U-Haul truck they drove to the kosher grocery before their final stand, according to sources. A live pipe bomb was later found inside the vehicle.
Anti-cop and anti-Jewish posts were also found on Anderson's social media pages, sources told NBC.
The lengthy firefight finally ended after an armored police vehicle crashed through the storefront and into the supermarket, officials said.
Fulop and Jersey City Police Chief James Shea, the brother of NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, said neighborhood surveillance and CCTV cameras captured Anderson and Graham zeroing in on the grocery at Martin Luther King Drive and Bayview Ave.
Their U-Haul moved slowly through city streets before stopping directly outside the Jewish store, with both shooters calmly exiting the van and marching across the street to the execute anyone inside the supermarket.
"It was a targeted attack on the Jewish kosher deli," Fulop told reporters during a brief press conference Wednesday morning.
The duo had just shot and killed Seals about a mile away in a Jersey City cemetery before driving directly to the grocery, officials said. By the time the shooting ended, hundreds and hundreds of bullets were fired by the killers, cops said.
"We now know this did not begin with gunfire between police officers and perpetrators and then move to the store," Shea said. "It began in the store."
The third shooting victim was identified as Miguel Jason Rodriguez, a Newark man who took a job at the Jersey City store more than a year ago. The Ecuadorean immigrant leaves behind a wife and an 11-year-old daughter, according to NorthJersey.com.
A distant relative of Moishe Ferencz, whose wife died in the assault, said the repercussions from the killing echoed well beyond Jersey City.
"This tragedy not only befell our family, but the Jewish community from coast to coast in the U.S.," he said. "But certainly the closer you are to the victim, there is much more pain."
NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the extra protections on Jewish sites throughout the city will remain for the foreseeable future.
"We denounce this act of senseless violence," said Shea, adding there is currently no threat against the city.
The NYPD has also created a new unit to focus on growing levels of racial extremism in the city, de Blasio said.
The Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremism Unit, known as REME, will "focus on identifying any trends and signs of racial and ethnic extremism and act before any terror or bias crime occurs," de Blasio said.
