Jersey City shooting victim Douglas Rodríguez heroically saved customer
One of the victims of Tuesday’s Jersey City grocery store killings helped a customer escape the besieged shop before he was killed.
Store worker Douglas Miguel Rodríguez, 49, is being called a hero for helping save the customer, CBS New York reported.
“After being shot, he opened the back door for a customer to be rescued,” said Rabbi David Niederman, the executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. “Unfortunately, he died at the footstep of that door.”
A native of Ecuador, Rodríguez was married and had a daughter, Amy. He was the family’s breadwinner, NJ.com reported, leaving his wife Marta Rodríguez Freire scrambling for help. He held a commercial engineering degree from Universidad Laica Vicente Rocafuerte, in Guayaquil, and worked in banking and insurance before coming to the U.S. when the insurance company he worked for folded.
He was introduced to the grocery store owner about a year and a half ago by a mutual friend, and got a job there. His friendliness and happy expressions earned him the nickname “the guy of smiles.”
Shop owner Leah Mindel Ferencz, 31, and fellow Brooklyn native Moshe Deutsch, 24, and were also killed inside the store. Detective Joseph Seals, 40, was killed at a nearby cemetery by the same attackers.
The two shooters, David Anderson and his lover, Francine Graham, were killed by police in a prolonged shootout. They were frequent attendees of an anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelite church in Harlem. They are also suspected in the murder of a cab driver in Bayonne on Dec. 7.
At an emotional vigil for the victims Thursday night, Freire said through tears that she forgives the attackers, CBS New York reported. The couple volunteered at Iglesia Nueva Vida, a church in Harrison, New Jersey, where they lived.
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