Improving Workplace Security in the Age of Terrorism Fatality File

December 10, 2019 – Two shooters attack a Kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, killing three people inside the shop. New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal later says the killings are being investigated as domestic terrorism, “fueled by both anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs.” Before committing the murders at the store, the shooters killed a police detective near a Jersey City cemetery. The shooters, David N. Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, die in a standoff with police.

CNN – This week’s deadly kosher market attack and the killing of a detective in New Jersey are being investigated as acts of domestic terrorism “fueled by both anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” the state attorney general said Thursday.

“We believe the suspects held views that reflected hatred of the Jewish people, as well as a hatred of law enforcement,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal said, citing evidence and witness interviews.

Investigators believe David N. Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, killed a police detective near a Jersey City cemetery and then stormed a nearby Jewish market Tuesday, shooting and killing three people there and starting an hours long police standoff that ended with their deaths, authorities said.

It’s still not known why Anderson and Graham attacked the detective and the JC Kosher Supermarket in particular, Grewal said.

But evidence points to these being “acts of hate,” Grewal said in a news conference in Jersey City. The FBI is investigating the shootings as “domestic terrorism with a hate-crime bias slant to it,” said Gregory Ehrie, special agent in charge for the FBI in Newark.

Investigators think Anderson and Graham acted by themselves, Ehrie said.

While both shooters have expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites movement, neither appear to have established formal links to the movement, Grewal said. Grewal didn’t specify evidence pointing to a hate crime, though he said social media accounts believed linked to the shooters “espouse certain viewpoints.”

Grewal and others stressed that once at the market, the shooters apparently fired only at people there, and at responding police officers, bypassing multiple opportunities to shoot others on the street.

“They were clearly targeting that store. They were clearly targeting the Jersey City Police Department,” US Attorney Craig Carpenito said, partly citing surveillance video.