Suspects in Jersey City shooting attack had powerful bomb in van
"If it exploded in the right place, it could have certainly injured or killed people up to five football fields away."
By TZVI JOFFREJERSEY CITY police work at the scene the day after an hours-long gun battle with two men around a kosher market in Jersey City, New Jersey.(photo credit: REUTERS)
The two suspects who carried out a shooting attack at a Jersey City, New Jersey, kosher grocery in December had a bomb in their U-Haul van that could have killed or wounded people up to half a kilometer from the scene, according to the FBI.The attack could have been part of a larger one that was planned against the Jewish community and law enforcement, it said.The suspects had enough material in the van to make a second bomb, the US attorney in New Jersey and the head of the local FBI said this week.“If it exploded in the right place, it could have certainly injured or killed people up to five football fields away,” said Gregory Ehrie, the FBI Newark special agent in charge, CNN reported.US Attorney for New Jersey Craig Carpenito said police detective Joseph Seals, who intercepted and was shot and killed by the perpetrators on their way to the grocery, “threw off a broader plan” and “probably saved dozens if not more lives,” NBC reported.“This was nothing but a senseless, evil, cowardly act of antisemitism and hatred toward not just the Jewish community, but law enforcement,” he said. The two suspects “both targeted Jewish victims and law enforcement, and we know now that they planned greater acts of mayhem on both communities.”Authorities said they could not detail what that broader plan would have been, but the suspects had done research on a Jewish community center in nearby Bayonne. The kosher grocery had been cased by the suspects multiple times. Several days before the shooting, a Jewish man driving near Newark Airport was shot at; ballistics tests showed that the bullets were fired by the suspects’ guns.Ehrie said the two suspects were not connected to any group, including the Black Hebrew Israelites, although a note found on top of a bloody Bible in the van said one of the suspects was a follower of the group, CNN reported.A note found on one of the suspects read, “FBI’s War on Black America,” referencing a documentary of the same name in 1990, specifically a part of the film that called for violence against law enforcement.A lot of individuals like the suspects in the New Jersey attack are “off the radar,” Ehrie said. “They aren’t doing anything that would bring them to anybody’s attention, whether that’s by intent or whether that’s just by their lifestyles, and then just something goes and they commit to an act like this. That is very, very difficult.”
“There’s no organization to look into,” he said. “There’s nobody to infiltrate. There’s no undercover work we can do. There’s no phone we can tap. There’s no anything [to use] our usual techniques to get inside the minds of these people.”The gunmen drove into Jersey City’s small ultra-Orthodox community and opened fire at the kosher grocery store, killing Leah Minda Ferencz, who owned the business with her husband, and Moshe Deutsch, 24. Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, an immigrant from Ecuador who worked at the store, was also killed in the attack after helping to save a wounded customer.Veteran police officer Seals was a father of five.The two shooters were killed in the attack.The scene remained chaotic for several hours as heavily armed officers fought a gun battle with the suspects. Schools in the area were locked down during the incident and had a delayed start the next day.JTA contributed to this report.
