Kosher market shooter published anti-Semitic posts before ‘targeted’ attack

A brief, “rambling” manifesto was also found in the van that the assailants were driving, but the note provided no motive for the shooting. A live pipe bomb was also found inside the van during a search by investigators.

The violence began near a cemetery where the suspects fatally shot Jersey City Police Department Detective Joseph Seals, 40, in the head. Seals had approached the van because it was tied to another homicide over the weekend. Surveillance video showed that after killing Seals, the duo drove slowly to the kosher deli about a mile away.

“The perpetrators stopped in front of there and calmly opened the door with two long rifles,” Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said.

After getting out of the van, surveillance footage shows them enter the market while firing their guns, killing three more people. The shooting was described as a “targeted” attack. They then began an extensive firefight with the police and other responding forces, which caused a lockdown of the area and of schools across the entire city.

Law enforcement managed to kill the two assailants during the gunfight, which lasted for more than an hour.

The attack took place in Jersey City’s Greenville neighborhood, where several Hasidic Jewish families have moved to from Brooklyn, New York, in recent years. The kosher market that was targeted opened about three years ago and was a central hub of the area’s Jewish community.

Although there has been speculation that the shooters were Muslim, the mayor said that there is “zero indication to that being accurate.”