As many as six people may be dead — including a police officer, two suspects and three civilians — during an "ambush" active shooter situation at a store in Jersey City Tuesday afternoon, officials and law enforcement sources said.
Law enforcement sources identified the dead officer as a 39-year-old married father of five, Det. Joseph Seals.
According to three senior law enforcement officials, the shoot-out began as a possible homicide investigation. The deceased officer approached suspects in that investigation and was shot and killed. The suspects then fled into the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive, where the standoff started around 12:30 p.m.
Kelly said that the preliminary investigation suggests Seals was killed "while trying to interdict the bad guys at that other location," which Kelly subsequently identified as a cemetery on Garfield Avenue.
A law enforcement source said the suspects were holed up in a bodega for hours, one of whom was armed with a long gun.
Four other people were thought to be inside the bodega, the senior official said, stressing the highly preliminary nature of the evolving investigation. There were at least three civilians killed inside the store as well, a law enforcement source tells NBC New York. Citing the preliminary investigation, Kelly said that authorities believe the civilians killed inside the store where killed by the "bad guys."
Kelly said that the preliminary investigation shows one stolen U-Haul vehicle that "may contain an incendiary device" and has since been taken from the location and was being examined by bomb squad members.
The other two locations that most be combed through for evidence is the grocery store itself and the cemetery, Kelly said.
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