Tag Archives: shooters

Jewish grocery was targeted in New Jersey attack, motives unclear: officials

Jewish grocery was targeted in New Jersey attack, motives unclear: officials
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two armed individuals targeted a New Jersey kosher grocery in an attack that killed six people including the shooters, though the motive of the attack remains unclear, public safety officials said on Wednesday.

A police shootout with two people armed with high-powered rifles erupted after midday on Tuesday in Jersey City, New Jersey. The six dead included three civilians, one police officer and both shooters, authorities said.

Police officers use vehicles for protection during a shootout in Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. December 10, 2019 in this still image obtained from a social media video. @GABRIELANGELVALLE /via REUTERS

The four-hour gun battle at the Jewish JC Kosher Supermarket erupted after the pair shot the police officer at a nearby cemetery, which they fled in a white van.

“They exited the van and they proceeded to attack this location in a targeted manner,” Jersey City Public Safety Director James Shea told a morning news conference. “With the amount of ammunition they had, we have to assume they would have continued attacking human beings if we hadn’t been there.”

He did not comment on why the grocery was targeted but said the shooters appeared to choose it rather than other people or locations on the street. Police declined to release the names or genders of the shooters.

The New York Times reported that a suspect involved in the shooting had posted anti-Semitic and anti-police messages online and cited law enforcement officials as saying investigators believed the attack was motivated by those sentiments.

Jersey City officials were not immediately available for comment.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop ordered police to be on high alert to protect Jewish neighborhoods following the attack.

“Due to an excess of caution the community may see additional police resources in the days/weeks ahead,” Fulop wrote. “We have no indication there are any further threat(s).”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted that while there was no known specific threat to that city, he had placed city police on high alert to protect Jewish residents.

“Tonight NYPD assets are being deployed to protect key locations in the Jewish community,” he said late Tuesday.

Police had said earlier on Tuesday they believed the kosher grocery was randomly singled out by the shooters.

Some local media reported the initial confrontation between the suspects and police near the Jersey City cemetery, about a mile away from the supermarket, was linked to a previous homicide investigation.

The dead police officer was shot at the cemetery shortly before the shootout around the grocery began.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani and Barbara Goldberg in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)

Buckets of rocks are Pennsylvania schools’ last defense against shooters

Students from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC, hold up signs with the names of those killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By David DeKok

HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – A rural Pennsylvania school district has equipped all 200 of its classrooms with buckets of rocks that students and teachers could use as a “last line of defense” in the event of a school shooting, the district’s superintendent said on Friday.

The buckets are just one of the measures that Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, has put in place this academic year, along with security cameras, secured building entrances and fortified classroom doors, Superintendent David Helsel said in a telephone interview.

“We didn’t want our students to be helpless victims,” Helsel said. “River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers.”

Last month’s massacre of 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, sparked fresh debate in the United States over how to prevent school shootings.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to join rallies in Washington and around the country on Saturday calling for tighter gun laws in “March for Our Lives” protests organized by the young survivors of the Parkland shooting.

Helsel said the idea of equipping classrooms with rocks grew out of his reading of the active-shooter defense program known as ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.

He first spoke about the rock buckets in testimony at the Pennsylvania state house in Harrisburg last week.

Helsel said his school board approved the rock buckets before they were put in the classrooms at the district’s five schools last fall. Parents in Orwigsburg, about 92 miles (148 km) northwest of Philadelphia, have been mostly supportive, he added.

“It is so unbelievably tragic that our society has come to a point where schools have to arm themselves with buckets of rocks to defend the against active shooters,” said Robert Conroy, director of organizing with gun-control group CeaseFirePA. “We should be talking about real reform of gun laws.”

(Editing by Scott Malone and Dan Grebler)