A New Jersey man whose number was found in the back pocket of one of the perpetrators of last week’s fatal shootings at a Jewish market is due in court Monday to face a weapons charge unrelated to the attack.
Ahmed A-Hady, of Keyport, was charged with being a felon in possession of a weapon. He had been convicted of a drug charge in 2012. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Newark in the afternoon.
A-Hady’s number was found in the pants pocket of David Anderson, one of two attackers killed by police after an hours-long standoff at the JC Kosher Supermarket. Anderson and Francine Graham killed Jersey City Police Det. Joseph Seals before storming the store, killing three people inside. The attack is being investigated as domestic terrorism.
Anderson and Graham are also prime suspects in the slaying of a delivery driver found dead in a car trunk in nearby Bayonne the previous weekend, authorities have said.
A-Hady hasn’t been charged with providing any of the weapons used in Tuesday’s shootings. The FBI said searches of his residence and a pawnshop in Keyport where he works — 25 kilometres south of where the shootings occurred — yielded weapons including three AR-15-style assault rifles, three handguns and one shotgun, as well as more than 400 rounds of ammunition.
Anderson and Graham were armed with multiple weapons including an AR-15-style rifle and a shotgun, and a pipe bomb was also found in the stolen U-Haul van they drove to the market.
Two of the weapons used by Anderson and Graham were bought by Graham in Ohio last year, police have said. It’s not known where they got the three other guns.
CBS2NY reported that A-Hady’s brother said the family had never heard of the suspects and the pawnshop didn’t sell firearms.