Jersey City Shootings: 6 People Killed, Including Officer

Officials said the dead included three people in the store as well as two suspected shooters. The slain police officer was not immediately identified.

There was “no indication of terrorism,” an official said at a news conference.

— A firefight broke out in a residential neighborhood.

For more than an hour, loud exchanges of gunfire rang out in the Greenville neighborhood of Jersey City, which is just across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan. Helicopters circled overhead as police officers swarmed the streets.

They aimed handguns and long guns in every direction as they traveled down the street in formations, knocking on doors and ushering residents and business owners to safety.

The shooting started around 12:30 p.m., according to officials.

Jersey City’s mayor, Steven Fulop, said there were two separate incidents involved in the shootout. The first was at Bay View Cemetery, and the second took place at a corner store near the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Bayview Avenue.

The Hudson County prosecutor’s office said earlier that one police officer was killed and that two other officers and that a bystander had been wounded but were in stable condition.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy said in a statement: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the men and women of the Jersey City Police Department, especially with the officers shot during this standoff, and with the residents and schoolchildren currently under lockdown.”

Police vehicles from Hudson County, Bergen County, West New York and Jersey City lined the block from Grant Avenue to Myrtle Avenue.

Sacred Heart School, a Catholic elementary school across from the scene of the shooting, was placed on lockdown, a spokeswoman said. The students there had not been harmed.

Multiple law enforcement agencies were responding to the scene, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

A spokesman for the ATF said the agency was treating the incident as an “active shooter” situation as of 1:45 p.m. Tuesday.

— ‘One of the biggest gunfights I’ve seen in a while.’

Residents cleared from their homes and stores watched anxiously from behind a barricade as SWAT teams, bomb squads and heavily armed officers overtook their neighborhoods.

As they stood at street corners, waiting for word that it would be safe to return, they described a tense standoff punctuated with exchanges of gunfire that did not stop until just before 2 p.m.

“I heard this constant shooting, and it kept going on for about 15 minutes,” said Willy McDonald, 67. By the time he came outside, there were cops everywhere. “There had to be at least eight of them.”

“This is one of the biggest gunfights I’ve seen in a while,” said McDonald. “And I’ve been in Vietnam.”

One frustrated resident, Corey McCloed, 39, said it was like the city was under siege.

— Schools on lockdown

Twelve public schools in the vicinity of the shooting were shut down and on lockdown, according to the superintendent of Jersey City Public Schools, Frank Walker.

Walker said he was told that gunfire broke out around 12:30 p.m. He and his staff were communicating with police officers, who were still responding to the shooting, he said.

Schools in neighboring Bayonne, New Jersey, were ordered to shelter in place as a result of police activity.

New Jersey Transit said it was suspending bus service and Hudson-Bergen Light Rail service as officers continued to respond.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .