Sam Gold was on his way to the synagogue and parked across from a kosher deli when his phone rang Tuesday. The brief call from his wife kept Gold inside his Kia Optima, and he didn’t notice the nearby U-Haul truck until he hung up.

Two men got out of the truck with large guns and moved toward the JC Kosher Supermarket in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Greenville, Gold said.

Then he heard the crack of gunfire. Bullets whizzed as he ducked under his steering wheel and called 911.

Eventually, SWAT officers rescued Gold. Others weren’t so fortunate.

The attackers “started shooting on the street and ran right into the kosher supermarket in the Jewish community,” Gold told The Washington Post. “They definitely targeted the store. They didn’t look around. They had a destination… They went straight to the store.”

An hours-long gun battle between two armed attackers and police killed six people, including one police officer and the two shooters.

Among the other victims were Mindy Ferencz, a 31-year-old mother of three who owned the kosher market with her husband; a store employee identified by police as Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49; and Moshe Deutsch, 24, a deli customer who was the son of a prominent Jewish community leader in Brooklyn.

Authorities initially portrayed the Tuesday afternoon shooting as a horrific, if seemingly random, crime. But that picture changed Wednesday with surveillance video that officials said indicated the market had been deliberately marked for violence, raising the specter that the shooting was another in a growing national pattern of anti-Semitic attacks.

“I do believe it is a hate crime,” Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop (D) said in an interview, noting that he had seen “favorable sentiment toward anti-Semitic groups” from the attackers on Facebook. “I don’t know how anybody can interpret it any other way. We live in a time where it is important to call out hate for what it is and do it quickly.”

Across the Hudson River, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) agreed, calling the killings “an act of terror.”

“This confirms a sad truth, there is a crisis of anti-Semitism gripping this nation,” de Blasio said of the attack that claimed the lives of two New York natives, pointing to social media platforms as significant enablers. “And now this threat has reached the doorstep of New York City.”

Initially, investigators would not go as far as the mayors, saying more digging was needed before ascribing a motive. Although they continue to explore why the men targeted a particular store or individuals, on Thursday they said the evidence thus far, including the men’s social media accounts, point "toward acts of hate.”

No evidence has linked the suspects to the Black Hebrew Israelites, authorities said, though they were looking into that possibility.

One thing remains abundantly clear, Grewal said Thursday, the outcome would have been far worse if two officers working nearby had not rushed to the scene, where they were immediately met with shots from a high-powered rifle.

Police said they recovered five firearms linked to the two deceased men — four inside the supermarket and one inside the U-Haul van — as well as a pipe bomb capable of exploding in the truck.

Tuesday’s shooting would follow a pair of deadly attacks at U.S. synagogues within the past 14 months: one near San Diego that left one person dead in April, and one in October 2018 at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that claimed 11 lives.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive, said Wednesday that more investigation into the Jersey City attack was needed but that it appeared to be “another incident in a long line of violent incidents targeting the Jewish community. This hatred is a disease, and right now, we are experiencing an epidemic.”

Tuesday’s killings were reminiscent of a 2015 attack in Paris in which a gunman stormed a kosher supermarket and killed four people, all of them Jewish. As with that attack, which followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, the shooting at the Jersey City market came after an earlier spasm of violence.

Police say the attackers began Tuesday’s killings at a cemetery, fatally shooting veteran Jersey City detective Joseph Seals — a father of five — who had approached a U-Haul van because it had been reported stolen and linked to a weekend homicide. The assailants then slowly drove the van for five minutes to the kosher market on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, which is next to a synagogue, across the street from a Catholic school and down the block from a mosque.

The attack set off a lengthy gun battle with police. By the end of the day, six people were dead, and the Jewish community on both sides of the Hudson River was in mourning. The bodies of the attackers — David Anderson, 47, and an accomplice, identified by police as Francine Graham, 50 — were recovered amid the wreckage of the store, which was littered with shattered glass and hundreds of ammunition casings.

Thus far, the evidence indicates that within minutes of entering the market, Anderson and Graham killed the three civilians and then focused their fire on law enforcement, Grewal said.

Hundreds of mourners bundled in black coats gathered in New Jersey’s second-largest city Wednesday night for Ferencz’s funeral.

Before the service, men shuffled in and out of the synagogue, hastily setting up an oblong folding table on which the casket would rest; the women shivered in the bitter cold, huddled on the far side of the avenue across from the house of worship, a nondescript corner building.

In the frigid night, the streets surrounding the funeral were mostly bare. An occasional passerby would stop to assess a scene unfamiliar to many outside of the insular ultra-Orthodox community. The intersection was blocked off by police tape, marked Jersey City police vehiclesand Hatzolah ambulance buses and other large vehicles brought in by Orthodox organizations. Flood lights were raised from high perches, illuminating the mass of people in attendance.

Over the course of the hour-long service, several men spoke in Yiddish, their pain piercing the recited prayers, which were carried through the streets via a loudspeaker system.

Moishe and Mindy Ferencz, known by their neighbors as the “pioneers” who first relocated from Williamsburg to Jersey City, had opened their market to cater to the growing Jewish community, which includes many Hasidic families like theirs who left pricey Brooklyn for cheaper living.

Jersey City is more affordable than nearby New York and has easy access to the city via public transportation. A subway ride to New York across the Hudson is typically a 20-minute commute. Jersey City was historically a manufacturing town and did not have a significant ultra-Orthodox community. But that has changed over the past decade, as Brooklyn-based Hasidic families, priced out of gentrifying neighborhoods like Williamsburg, moved to the other side of the river.

And they can’t just pack their bags and move, Yoseph Rapaport, a Yiddish podcaster from Brooklyn told The Post. “They need boys’ schools, girls’ schools, Judaica bookstores, a synagogue — all the accoutrements that come with having a vibrant Jewish community,” he said.

A predominantly African American neighborhood in Jersey City emerged as a good option because it was close to Brooklyn.

“I moved here from Borough Park because it was affordable and not too far from my family,” Usher Levy, 24, said in front of the boarded-up kosher market. “This is very tragic. We never had an incident before where Jews were targeted. We felt safe and comfortable. Now we have second thoughts about it.”

Fulop, who is Jewish, called Jersey City “the golden door to America” and said that “hate and anti-Semitism have never had a place” here.

In 2017, Fulop told the New York Times he took pride in Jersey City’s increasing diversity. Yet the influx of young ultra-Orthodox families provoked tension between newcomers and longtime residents.

At a news conference Wednesday, Grewal called the attack an affront to America’s multicultural values — especially Jersey City’s.

“It’s a city of Chinese grocers and Indian shopkeepers and recent college graduates, all striving for a better life in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty,” he said.

Wednesday evening, as the streets filled with mourners attending the vigils, officials reiterated that message. “This is a mixed community, and African Americans have always been welcoming to other cultures coming into their communities. And we will continue to remain like that, and we will work together,” Jersey City Councilwoman Joyce Watterman said. Councilman Jermaine Robinson added: “A great leader once said hate can’t drive out hate. Only love can do that … I believe that message still lives on.”

Rabbi David Niederman, executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, said he was in “shock and disbelief” after the shooting. He said he thought the Jersey City Jewish community, which includes many individuals who were once part of his Williamsburg congregation, “was living in peace with the rest of the community there. Unfortunately, very fast it became clear that was a big mistake.”

He added: “This is something that is killing everyone. The guy who hates the Jew, hates everyone who is not the same as he thinks he has to be.”

Paul reported from New York, Witte from Washington. Sarah Pulliam Bailey in New York; and Hannah Knowles, Katie Mettler, Reis Thebault, Frances Stead Sellers, Julie Tate, Alice Crites and Mark Berman in Washington contributed to this report.

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