Jersey City shooters had powerful bomb, planned to target Jews and police
Jersey City street blocked off Image by Ari Feldman
(JTA) — The Jersey City kosher store shooters were carrying a bomb in the van they were using that had enough firepower to kill or wound people in an area the size of five football fields.
Federal officials on Monday also announced that David Anderson and Francine Graham were in possession of enough materials to make a second bomb.
David Anderson attacked a Jersey City, New Jersey kosher supermarket. Image by anti-defamation league
Anderson and Graham killed two Jews and a non-Jewish worker at the JC Kosher Supermarket, as well as a police officer at a nearby cemetery, in the Dec. 10 attack. Police killed the shooters during a standoff that lasted several hours.
Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on Monday that the shooters planned even greater acts of violence on Jews and law enforcement, The New York Times reported.
“Anderson and Graham both targeted Jewish victims and law enforcement, and we know now that they planned greater acts of mayhem on both communities,” he said.
Since their deaths, the pair have been linked to the shooting at a “visibly Jewish” New Jersey driver near Newark Airport of his back window and to the murder of a taxi driver.
Carpenito said video from inside the market before Anderson was killed showed him saying “They stole our heritage, they stole our birthright, and they hired these guys to stop us.” They also expressed hatred of Jews and law enforcement in notes left at the grocery shooting scene and in online posts, The Associated Press reported.
Surveillance video showed that the shooters had driven past the market in the rented van at least twice in the week before the shooting, according to Carpenito.
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