Hundreds of mourners packed a Jersey City funeral home Monday to remember the veteran cop slain by two gun-wielding domestic terrorists in last week’s bloody attack on a local Jewish deli.
Snow flurries began to fall outside the McLaughlin Funeral Home in Jersey City as mourners lined up and down the block, and around the corner to pay their final respects to Jersey City police Det. Joseph Seals — among them more than 100 police officers from throughout the region.
“Detective Seals was a blessing,” said one attendee who declined to give his name. “I used to work with him in the corrections department. He was always smiling, always helpful. He was just very respectful.”
Waitress Sonia Vivchar, 50, said the slain cop used to stop by the VIP Diner every morning.
“Seals used to come inside, grab his coffee,” Vivchar said. “It’s very upsetting. When I saw the video clip of those people crossing the street and shooting and I read that he was shot first, it broke me.”
Seals, 40, was shot and killed Dec. 10 at Bay View Cemetery in Jersey City.
Police said the fatal shot was fired by two people who then stormed a nearby Jewish deli and killed three others in what authorities are classifying a “domestic terror event.”
Suspects David Anderson, 47, and his companion, Francine Graham, 50, were later killed by police following a lengthy standoff.
Seals, a married father of five, was a Jersey City native and 1997 graduate of Bayonne High School, according to his obituary.
He first donned a uniform in 2001, when he became an officer in the Hudson County Corrections Department. He joined the Jersey City Police Department in 2005.
A dedicated street crime officer, Seals was promoted to detective in November 2017 and joined the department’s anti-gun Cease Fire Unit.
He and his wife, Laura, were married in Las Vegas in 2013, and again in a church ceremony the following year, his obituary said.
In addition to his children, he is also survived by his mother, three sisters and three brothers.