Authorities announced Thursday that they’re investigating the Jersey City shooting as an act of domestic terrorism. New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said the suspects had expressed anti-Semitism and hostility toward police.
“We continue to gather evidence regarding the motives of the shooters,” he said in a press conference Thursday. “We have identified a number of social media accounts that we believe were used by the suspects, and purport to espouse certain viewpoints. We are currently working to determine the authenticity of these accounts, and to gather other evidence that we can use to corroborate these views.”
Authorities said Wednesday that David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, were responsible for the shooting death of Jersey City police detective Joseph Seals on Tuesday. They later went to the J.C. Kosher Supermarket about a mile away, and murdered three people: the store owner Mindy Ferencz, 32, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, and Moshe Deutsch, 24.
Investigators have not publicly announced the alleged motive. Grewal said that they are still looking into how Anderson and Graham decided to target Seals and the kosher supermarket. Two victims at the store shooting–Ferencz and Deutsch–were Jewish.
“There has been considerable reporting that these two suspects are linked to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement,” Grewal said. “We have evidence that both suspects expressed interest in this group, but we have not definitively established any formal links to that organization or to any other group. Based on the available evidence, we believe that the two shooters were acting on their own, but we will continue to pursue all leads.”
[Image via Rick Loomis/Getty Images]
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