Two gunmen went on an hours-long shooting rampage Tuesday in Jersey City, N.J., targeting a Jewish grocery store and getting into a firefight with police that killed four people, including a police officer, as well as the two suspects, reports the Wall Street Journal. The shootings began at the Bay View Cemetery when police detective Joe Seals confronted the suspects and was shot and killed by them. The suspects, two men dressed in black and armed with high-powered rifles, fled to the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket several blocks away. The shootout at the store left three bystanders dead in addition to the two gunmen. Police took heavy fire for hours from the suspects inside the store.
Authorities recovered a stolen U-Haul truck containing an incendiary device. Mayor Steven Fulop said authorities believe the shooters targeted the grocery store. Director of Public Safety James Shea said there was no evidence the shooting was an act of terrorism, and investigators had yet to determine a motive. One of the suspects had published anti-Semitic and anti-police posts online and investigators believe the attack was motivated by those sentiments, the New York Times reports. Detective Seals had been assigned to the police Cease Fire Unit. Bursts of shots could be heard every 15 minutes, said Ethridge Stone, who lives near the scene. “I’ve never heard rapid gunfire like I heard today,” he said. “Store owners were hitting the ground, dodging bullets,” said Pamela Johnson of the Anti-Violence Coalition of Hudson County, who lives near the scene of the shooting.