Jersey City, N.J., supermarket worker Douglas Miguel Rodriguez returned from vacation just in time to die a hero.
The Ecuadorian immigrant was less than an hour into his first shift back at the JC Kosher Supermarket when a pair of anti-Semitic killers opened fire on the store, with Rodriguez taking a fatal bullet to spare a wounded young Jewish customer who survived the chilling assault, friends of the victims recounted Thursday.
"Is there any more proof that things happen for a reason?" asked Meier Ferencz, whose sister-in-law was among the three victims gunned down in the hate crime targeting Jews and police officers.
The lucky-to-be-alive Chaim Deutsch had stopped with his cousin Moshe Deutsch to grab a kosher sandwich inside the store around 12:45 p.m. Tuesday when killers David Anderson and Francine Graham opened fire on the eatery from the street outside.
Moshe Deutsch, 24, of Brooklyn, was shot and killed as a wounded Chaim Deutsch gaped in disbelief before bolting for the back door _ and he found Rodriguez already holding it open.
"When the shooting started, he opened the door so (Deutsch) could run out," said Chaim Fried, a neighborhood resident who heard the story from Chaim Deutsch at the Jersey City Medical Center on Tuesday night. "And Miguel got shot at the door. He was going to run out but Miguel got shot before he could escape. He was shot, and he fell to the ground."
Rodriguez, 49, the married father of an 11-year-old daughter, was fatally wounded as the killers continued to blast away with a shotgun and an assault weapon. He was killed along with Moshe Deutsch and the store owner's wife Mindy Ferencz, 31.
"He tried to help someone and ended up dead," Moses Wesier, a longtime friend of the Deutsch family, said of Rodriguez. "It's very, very sad."
Chaim Deutsch, who landed in the Jersey City hospital with a pair of graze wounds, never saw the shooter and never looked back as he bolted into the open space behind the business and scaled a few fences to make his getaway.
The diligent Rodriguez had worked at the supermarket for nearly a year.
"He came (back) from vacation," said Meier Ferencz, whose brother Moshe owner the business. "He showed up right before the shooting, right before it happened. He was like part of the family. We lost three perfectly beautiful lives."
Authorities believe Anderson and Graham shot and killed the helpless victims within minutes of walking inside the market with guns blazing. The shooters were intent on killing police officers and local Jewish residents, authorities said after 48 hours of investigation.
