JERSEY CITY (1010 WINS) – A New Jersey pawn shop owner is facing gun charges, apparently in connection with the shooting at a kosher store and cemetery in Jersey City that left four people, including a police officer, and two suspects dead.
Newark federal prosecutors say a slip of paper in the pocket of shooting suspect David Anderson had a partial phone number and the address for Ahmed A-Hady’s pawn shop, Buy N Sell City, in Keyport—about 35 miles from Jersey City.
A federal complaint says authorities uncovered weapons and ammunition at the pawn shop and home of A-Hady, the Daily News reported.
Three handguns were found in a safe at the shop and a shotgun and six rifles, including three AR-15-style assault rifles, were found at his home, according to the complaint.
Authorities say they also uncovered 400 rounds of ammo, including hollow-point bullets, at A-Hady’s home.
A-Hady, 35, was held Saturday pending a hearing in Newark Federal Court on Monday. He’s reportedly a convict who is barred from owning firearms.
Meanwhile, Gov. Phil Murphy attended services and made remarks at the Mt. Pisgah A.M.E. in Jersey City Sunday morning, urging people across the state to "come together in brotherhood and sisterhood."
“When one of us comes under attack, we all come under attack,” the governor said.
He called it “an attack on the very faith of Jersey City. An attack against all of us who are proud to live in a state as richly diverse as New Jersey.”
“People have got to come together as one and try to get along. It don’t matter what race you are, because when we bleed, we all bleed red,” one congregant told 1010 WINS reporter Roger Stern.
On Saturday, the FBI said it recovered a white van that may be linked to the killings. The van was found Saturday morning in Orange. It’s being examined for any evidence related to the attackers.
Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, killed a police officer near a cemetery, three people in a kosher supermarket and then died in an hourslong gun battle with police Tuesday, authorities say.
New Jersey's attorney general said Thursday that the attackers were driven by hatred of Jews and law enforcement. The two were armed with a variety of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a shotgun, and a pipe bomb was also found in a stolen U-Haul van — a vehicle different from the white van recovered Saturday.
Anderson and Graham had expressed interest in a fringe religious group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose members often rail against Jews and whites, but there was no evidence so far that they were members and they are believed to have acted alone, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said.
The two shot and killed Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals in Bay View Cemetery, then killed Mindel Ferencz, 31, who owned the grocery with her husband; 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there; and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, Grewal said.
There was a memorial service Saturday night for Rodriguez amid a GoFundMe effort to raise money to send his body back to his native Ecuador for burial and to help his wife and young daughter. The page had raised over $115,000 by Sunday.