Hate Crimes
If convicted, Anton Redding, 24, could face up to six years in prison.
“This act of savagery was to profane the holy. They just stepped into a kosher market, a place of service and faith. I have not seen that many bullet holes since I left Iraq,” said Elan Carr, the Trump administration’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism.
N.J. State Attorney Gen. Gurbir Grewal, whose office is overseeing the case, said he’s investigating the case as an act of “domestic terror.”
The Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremism (REME) unit will be “focused on any trends, and any signs of racially and ethnically motivated extremism.”
“We are absolutely devastated by the loss of life and stand side by side with the Jewish community, as well as law enforcement, who are mourning the loss of one of their own,” said the Anti-Defamation League in a statement.
Jersey City Councilman Jermaine Robinson said the gunfire was unlike anything he had ever heard before, the shots “going and going and going without a pause.”
Three civilians—two believed to be Jewish—one officer and two suspects were reported killed as a result of rapid gunfire. Police say the motives were not related to anti-Semitism or terrorism.
Almog Peretz stated that the house of worship did not have proper security and did not utilize a $150,000 grant to upgrade its security.
“The ADL has failed to call out any form of anti-Semitism that isn’t borne of white supremacy, and their curriculum is more about tolerance and racism in general than it is about the unique history of anti-Semitism,” said Bryan Leib, a board member of Americans Against Anti-Semitism.
The 30-year-old victim, a teacher and father of four, was rushed to Westchester Medical Center in critical condition and reportedly remained in the same condition after undergoing surgery.
“We have watched in horror as more and more houses of worship have become targets for white supremacists, white nationalists and anti-Semites,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who introduced the measure.
“We must never react with defeatism, which simply rewards evil and feeds darkness; our fear of evil only feeds and animates it,” said Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was injured along with two others in the April 27 attack by a lone gunman.
