One police officer has been shot in the head amid an ongoing active shooter situation at a bodega in Jersey City Tuesday — and every single public school in the city has been locked down as multiple SWAT teams respond, according to a senior law enforcement official and local authorities.
The situation is fluid and information is developing rapidly; one law enforcement source described the attack as an “ambush,” and said at least one man was holed up in a bodega with a long gun, sources say. Some sources said a woman was also inside the store, but her possible involvement in the ongoing shooting situation wasn’t immediately clear.
Heavily armed local and state officers in SWAT trucks swarmed the scene, ducking behind doorways and store entrances — some even crawling along sidewalks, closely pressed to the ground — as they zeroed in on the bodega where the suspect was believed to be barricaded. Gunshots — dozens of them, it appeared — continued to pop off throughout the afternoon, based on audio from the scene. The streets in the immediate area were totally empty of what would normally be heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic.