The devastated mother of slain Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals reached out to her son to make sure he was safe amid Tuesday’s shootout — not realizing that he’d already been gunned down by a pair of hate-filled attackers.
“I texted him, ‘Joe, are you alive? You ok?,’” Deborah Perruzza told Fox News on Wednesday.
“I never heard back from him.”
Seals, 39, on Tuesday spotted David Anderson and Francine Graham in a stolen U-Haul van that was linked to the killing of a livery driver in Bayonne.
He was fatally shot in the head when he tried to question the pair, law enforcement sources have told The Post.
“I kept thinking, it’s not even real,” Perruzza said. “I just kept watching the news and I would see his picture and I was just saying to myself, ‘Why him? Why him?’”
A short time later, Anderson and Graham went to the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket and opened fire, killing three civilians inside the store, in an attack officials have said was motivated by anti-Semitism.
“How can people be so cruel?” Perruzza asked.
The grieving woman described walking into the hospital room to say her last goodbye to her son, who was married with five children of his own. His eyes were black and there was a towel behind his head, where he’d been shot.
“When I saw him yesterday, laying there, it was disgusting,” she told the outlet.
Seals, a 13-year veteran of the force, had been a major part of the department’s efforts to get guns off the street.
He was always destined to be a cop, his mom said.
“He followed his dreams … It was all he’s ever wanted to do and he accomplished it,” Perruzza said. “Everyone loved him. He was a fair cop. He helped people.”
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