By: Corey Landros
There was a bomb, too.
The animals behind the anti-Semitic shooting in Jersey City reportedly stashed a bomb in their van – one that the experts say could have massacred victims nearly half a mile away.
It was back on December 10 that David Anderson and Francine Graham started shooting at those inside the JC Koshopper Supermarket. Three were murdered, and a several-hours-long exchange of gunfire with police followed. Police also said that before the attack, the duo murdered New Jersey Detective Joseph Seals in a Jersey City cemetery.
“We believe [Seals] threw off a broader plan,” said U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito at a press conference. He also said that the detective’s actions “probably saved dozens if not more lives.”
“Authorities could not reveal if they had any additional information on a plan by the perpetrators to target other locations, except that they had researched a Jewish community center in Bayonne, not far from Jersey City,” reported National Review magazine. “The investigators said Anderson and Graham had enough material stashed in their van to make a second bomb as well.”
Police have said that they don’t believe a Yeshiva next door to the kosher supermarket was targeted, “but said they had cased the grocery store multiple times, including the morning of the attack,” NBC news said. Carpenito also confirmed a News 4 report that “several days before the shooting, a Jewish man driving near Newark Airport had been shot at; ballistics show two of the shots that hit the man’s car came from one of Anderson and Graham’s guns. The livery driver who died the weekend before the attack was shot with the same weapon that fired on the vehicle near the airport, authorities said.”
Authorities previously said that the assailants were “fueled by Black Hebrew Israelite ideology and that they likely would have taken more lives if they hadn’t encountered by chance Jersey City Det. Joseph Seals, who was killed in the Bayview Cemetery,” reported thedailybeast.com. “New Jersey U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said on Monday that video footage from the kosher supermarket captured Anderson saying, “They stole our heritage, they stole our birthright, and they hired these guys to stop us.”
The trend is disturbing. Over the last few months, “harassment and violent attacks against visibly Jewish New Yorkers have become disturbingly commonplace,” noted dukechronicle.com. “In 2018, NYPD received over 200 reports of anti-Semitic incidents. Among the areas hardest hit by this rise in anti-Semitism are those with large Hasidic Jewish populations such as the Crown Heights and Borough Park neighborhoods in Brooklyn. “A substantial proportion of these hate crimes involve brutal physical attacks on Orthodox Jews who are easily identifiable,” says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.”
