The two attackers, David Anderson and Francine Graham, had already left a trail of violence before reaching Greenville. Three days earlier, they had murdered Uber driver Michael Rumberger in nearby Bayonne -- his blood was found on a Bible belonging to the pair, and his DNA was on their clothing and a weapon. A week before that, they had fired shots at a visibly Jewish driver on U.S. Route 1/9 near Newark. When Detective Seals approached them at the cemetery, he was a veteran officer who had been on the force since 2006, a father, and someone his colleagues described as dedicated to getting illegal guns off the street. Anderson and Graham shot him and fled. Investigators would later determine that the detective's intervention disrupted plans for a far larger attack, possibly targeting the yeshiva of Khal Adas Greenville next to the market, where 50 to 60 children were present that day.

The attackers drove straight to the JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive, exiting the van in tactical gear and wielding an AR-15 and a Mossberg shotgun. They ignored bystanders on the street and directed their assault entirely at the store. By approximately 12:21 p.m., they had fatally shot store owner Mindy Ferencz, a 33-year-old mother of three; employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, originally from Ecuador; and customer Moshe Deutsch, a 24-year-old rabbinical student. A fourth person escaped wounded through the back door. The ensuing standoff with police lasted hours, ending only when a BearCat armored vehicle rammed through the storefront. Both attackers were killed. Inside the van outside, investigators found a live pipe bomb capable of killing or injuring people within 500 yards.

Anderson identified as a Black Hebrew Israelite and had posted hundreds of antisemitic and anti-police messages on social media under aliases including "Dawad Maccabee." Surveillance footage from inside the store recorded him saying, "They stole our heritage, they stole our birthright, and they hired these guys to stop us." New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal classified the attack as domestic terrorism fueled by hatred of Jewish people and law enforcement. The shooting occurred during a broader wave of violent antisemitic incidents across the northeastern United States; weeks later, a machete attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey, New York, underscored the pattern. In Jersey City itself, the aftermath exposed raw divisions -- a local school board trustee was pressured to resign after posting a social media message that appeared to sympathize with the attackers' grievances.

The kosher market reopened at a nearby location in March 2020, its owner determined to maintain a presence in the neighborhood. In November 2020, a grand jury cleared the 13 officers who had shot the attackers. In 2022, a memorial bench honoring Detective Seals was installed at 16th Street Park in Bayonne. The Greenville section of Jersey City, a working-class neighborhood along the city's southern waterfront, carries the weight of that December day differently depending on whom you ask. For the Jewish community that had been growing there, it was confirmation that the antisemitic threats they had been raising for months were real and escalating. For the broader neighborhood, it was a shock that a place known for its diversity could become the site of such targeted hatred. Four people -- a detective, a store owner, an immigrant worker, and a rabbinical student -- did not survive to see the community reckon with what happened.