Victim of Jersey City mass shooters laid to rest
Story from our partner paper: hudsonreporter.com
Dark clouds wept cold raindrops onto the white-gloved salutes of the thousands of officers and residents who said goodbye to Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, 40, on Tuesday, Dec. 17.
Seals lost his life in the line of duty on Dec. 10 at Bay View Cemetery in Jersey City, gunned down by David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, who then drove a mile from the cemetery and killed three civilians in a targeted attack at the JC Kosher Supermarket.
At a funeral procession along Bergen Avenue from McLaughlin Funeral Home to St. Aedan’s Church, officers from across the country stood at attention.
His brothers and sisters in blue from the Jersey City Police Department marched to the church, black bands over their police badges, under a three-story tall American flag hanging from Fire Department Engine ladders to honor the fallen officer.
Police departments from neighboring municipalities covered Jersey City Police Department shifts on Tuesday so the officers could attend.
Seals, of North Arlington, is survived by his wife Laura and his five children: Hailey, Adrian, Ethan, Isabel and Ivanna, his mother Deborah, three sisters, three brothers and his dog Osa.
Seals was born in Jersey City and graduated from Bayonne High School in 1997.
He began his career in law enforcement in 2001 when he joined the Hudson County Corrections Department before joining the Jersey City Police Department in 2005 after graduating from the Police Academy.
In 2008 on Christmas Eve, Seals and another officer climbed a fire escape, burst through the window of a home, and stopped a sexual assault on a 41-year-old woman.
He later received a citation for heroism.
He was assigned to the Jersey City South District working in the Street Crimes Unit and was promoted to detectives in 2017 when he joined the departments Cease Fire Unit.
According to Mayor Steven Fulop, he was a leading police officer in removing guns from the street during his 15 years in service to the city.
A moving procession began from McLaughlin Funeral Home, the motorcade moving slowly and followed by a car filled with flowers.
Seals’ death began a series of events that led to a wild, hours long shootout at the Kosher market in what state and local officials called a targeted, anti-Semitic attack. Both assailants died in the melee.
Their victims, Leah Mindel Ferencz, Moshe Deutsch, and Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, have been mourned at earlier services.
Before Detective Seals’s funeral, several hundred people gathered on Monday afternoon for a wake at McLaughlin Funeral Home.