Detective Joseph Seals, 39, was killed by two suspects on Tuesday in Jersey City
The mother the police detective slain in Tuesday’s shooting spree in Jersey City has broken her silence to share her grief at his death.
‘How can people be so cruel?’ said Deborah Perruzza, the mother of 39-year-old Detective Joseph Seals, in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.
Seals was investigating the December 7 murder of Uber driver Michael Rumberger and was shot dead by David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, when he approached the two suspects in their stolen U-Haul.
After killing Seals, the duo immediately launched an attack on a Jewish kosher supermarket, killing three more in what officials call a ‘targeted’ attack, before police shot the two suspects dead.
‘How can people be so cruel?’ said Seals’ mother Deborah Perruzza (with him above)
Seals was a married father of five, and joined the Jersey City PD in 2006 after serving with the military and other law enforcement agencies
At home in nearby Bayonne, Perruzza saw news of the shooting spree and immediately thought of her son.
‘I was watching the news and I saw there was a shootout and it wasn’t too far from me,’ she said. ‘I saw it was in my son’s district.’
Perruzza mistakenly thought her son was working the night shift that day, but was nonetheless worried about him.
‘I texted him, ‘Joe, are you alive? You ok?’ I never heard back from him,’ she said. ‘I called his wife but she hadn’t heard anything.’
As the horror shooting unfolded, word emerged that a police officer had been fatally shot. Within hours, Perruzza had received the fateful news that it had been her son.
‘I kept thinking, it’s not even real,’ Perruzza said. ‘I just kept watching the news and I would see his picture and I was just saying to myself, ‘Why him? Why him?”
Seals was a married father of five and member of the CeaseFire Unit dedicated to de-escalating gun violence.
Officials say that Seals was responsible for getting dozens of illegal firearms off the streets.
Seals is seen with wife Laura and four of their five children. He was responsible for getting dozens of illegal firearms off the streets
A piece of police tape is seen by Bay View Cemetery in Jersey City where Det. Joseph Seals was killed while trying to stop ‘bad guys,’ Police Chief Michael Kelly said without elaborating
Police Chief Michael Kelly said that Seals had joined the Jersey City police department in 2006, and praised him as dedicated detective who was well-liked on the force.
‘Joe was somebody who was involved in city,’ said Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop at a press conference.
‘Officers in other precincts knew who he was because he was a good cop.’
Perruzza said that her son had dreamed of being a police officer ever since he was a boy playing ‘cops and robbers.’
‘He followed his dreams. He wanted to be a police officer. It was all he’s ever wanted to do and he accomplished it,’ Perruzza said. ‘Everyone loved him. He was a fair cop. He helped people.’
The heartbroken mother said that the trip to see her slain son’s body on Tuesday night was her worst nightmare.
‘When I saw him yesterday, laying there, it was disgusting,’ she told Fox News.
Police sources say that Anderson and Graham were the prime suspects in the beating death of Rumsberger, who was found dead in the trunk of his own Lincoln Town Car in Bayonne on December 7.
David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, are believed to have killed Seals at the cemetery before storming a kosher market about a mile away
When Seals spotted them in a suspect vehicle and approached, he was shot dead. The assault on the JC Kosher Supermarket followed, along with an hours-long shootout as the suspects holed up inside the store.
The three innocent civilians killed in Tuesday’s attack on the store have been identified as Mindel Ferencz, 33, Moshe Hirsch Deutsch, 24, and Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49.
Police sources say Anderson was once a Black Hebrew Israelite, a group that believes black people are the true descendants of ancient Israelites.
Online posts tied to the Anderson include the statement ‘Blacks are jews, the “jewish” are impostors’, and a note left in the van used in the attack had words to the effect of ‘I do this because my creator makes me do this, and I hate who he hates,’ according to WNBC-TV.
The New Jersey Attorney General and other officials were hesitant to label the attack a hate crime, but Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop said on Wednesday it was ‘impossible’ to draw any other conclusion and that the community had to ‘aggressively’ call out anti-Semitism.
He also said that Graham and Anderson were ‘familiar’ with the community having both lived in it, and that they knew exactly where to target Jews.
‘I am Jewish. I am the grandson of a holocaust survivor. We need to be aggressive in calling it out for what it is.’