JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Memories of the 2019 shooting in Jersey City are still impacting people in the area one year later.
The echoing of gunfire on Martin Luther King Drive vividly replays in the memories of so many who witnessed the deadly shooting there on Dec. 10, 2019.
“It was loud, real loud. Pow, pow, pow, I mean, real loud,” Jersey City resident Anthony Odoms said.
Lloyd Thomas heard the shots while managing the Salvation Army thrift shop a block away. He says it was surreal being on lockdown for hours, too intense to realize the danger he was in.
“Police finally came in and told everybody to stand at the back of the store,” he said. “When it hit me… when I went home and my wife was sitting on the bed crying. Because you can go out every day, but you don’t know if you’re coming back.”
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“It was just like a cowboy movie,” said Pauline Ndzie, owner of Sophie’s Best African Hair Braiding Salon.
It all played out just a few yards from Ndzie’s salon. She and her customers hid in the back of her shop until early the next day. She’s still traumatized.
“If somebody open the car door and close it hard, you jump. I jump. I just try to go in the back,” Ndzie told CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez.
One year later, Ndzie sits in her empty salon, lamenting over the innocent lives lost that day and the part of her life she says she lost too.
“It was very slow after that, and when business tried to pick up, COVID came. With COVID, it went more and more dead,” she said.
PHOTOS: Scenes From Jersey City’s Deadly Shootout
Ndzie says customers have been scared away by crime and the coronavirus. She used to have three to four customers a day. Now, she has two in one week if she’s lucky. Sadly, she feels defeated.
“I don’t even know if I’m moving forward. I think I’m stuck in one place. I want to move, but I don’t know how to move,” she said.
A new business will soon move in to replace the kosher grocery, but neighbors say they’ll need so much more to heal.
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from CBS New York https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/12/10/jersey-city-shooting-residents-one-year-later/
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