New Jersey Holds Vigil for 2019 Kosher Market Shooting Victims
A clean-up crew sifts through debris at the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket, Dec. 11, 2019. Photo: Reuters.
Officials in New Jersey held a candlelight vigil on the steps of Jersey City’s city hall Thursday in remembrance of the victims of the 2019 attack on a kosher grocery, which left four dead, along with the two perpetrators.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop both credited the Jersey City police department with preventing a much deadlier attack that day. “Everyone who saw the scene that night or that next day will never forget how much worse it could have been but for their heroism,” Platkin said.
On Dec. 10, 2019, the two shooters — David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50 — murdered Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, a father of five children, before driving their U-Haul van to a nearby kosher market, where they shot dead the owner, Mindy Ferencz, employee Douglas Rodriguez and customer Moshe Deutsch.
Investigators later revealed that the van driven by the pair had been packed with explosives, powerful enough to explode the length of five football fields, about 500 yards.
The target of Anderson and Graham — radical Black nationalists who were shot dead after a four-hour gun battle with police — was a Jewish religious school adjacent to the market, where 50 children were studying at the time of the attack. Antisemitic social media postings by the pair were also uncovered as investigators probed further into their backgrounds.
The vigil, which was organized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, and the Israeli American Council, was also attended by New Jersey’s First Lady Tammy Murphy, the head of the FBI’s Newark field office, and the president of the Jersey City city council.
Rabbi Moshe Schapiro, the head of Chabad of Hoboken, read from the Bible before reciting Mourner’s Kaddish, a Jewish prayer, often recited during funerals.
“God says the ultimate blessing is if we have shalom, if we have peace. We may look alike, we may act alike, we may vote different, we may think different – the success of our blessings is if we know how to do so in peace,” Rabbi Schapiro said.