Hundreds of shots were exchanged. For the moment, no clear reason has yet been given to explain this shooting.
–The shooting started in a cemetery.
© RICK LOOMIS / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
Source AFP
Published on 12/11/2019 at 6:50 a.m.
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The shooting lasted more than two hours. On Tuesday, December 10, six people died in the heart of Jersey City, a New Jersey town bordering New York. A policeman, three civilians and the suspects were killed. Information confirmed by Michael Kelly, police chief of this city of 270,000 inhabitants.
Two other police officers were injured, he said during a press conference with the mayor of the city, stressing that the information was still “preliminary” and that the investigation would take time. If the shooting began in a cemetery, the suspects then “moved quickly and continuously in the neighborhood” for several hours, said Michael Kelly.
War scene
No clear reason has yet been given for the shooting, which turned a residential area of Jersey City into a scene of war for several hours: Hundreds of police from across New Jersey and New York have were deployed in the streets, often armed to the teeth, and dozens of emergency vehicles deployed on several streets, according to a photographer from Agence France-Presse on site.
According to local media reports unconfirmed by police, the shooting started as a police officer, who was investigating a murder, approached the suspects in the cemetery. Identified as a detective by the name of Joe Seals, he died first.
Hundreds of shots
The two suspects then took refuge in a grocery store, where the shooting continued. It was there that the bodies of two suspects and three civilians were found, after more than two hours of shooting, said Michael Kelly, without giving more details on these three victims. A stolen rental van, which “could contain an incendiary device,” is currently being inspected by an explosives detection unit, police say.
Hundreds of shots were exchanged, NBC television claimed. Schools and hospitals in the surrounding area were cordoned off as soon as the first reported gunfire was reported, as is the rule in the United States in the event of shooting. Parents were only allowed to collect their children from schools around 5 p.m. local time (9 p.m. GMT).
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