The identifies of some of the tragic Buffalo supermarket massacres that left ten dead and three injured are being identified, and there is one major common factor, the majority of the victims were Black, all but two.
65-year-old Celestine Chaney was at Tops Friendly Market to buy strawberries for shortages with her sister but was fatally shot because she couldn’t run fast enough.
Chaney’s sister escaped to the freezer, “but my mom cannot really walk like she used to,” her son Wayne Jones said.
An 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, who is the mother of the city’s former fire commissioner, had just left her elderly, ailing husband at a nursing home and was at the market to pick up groceries when she was also killed.
The former Buffalo Fire Commissioner, Garnell Whitfield, told The Post on Sunday that his father doesn’t know about Ruth’s death yet.
She was at the nursing home “every day taking care of my dad, shaving him, cutting his nails, cleaning his ears, cutting his hair, washing him, bathing him…making sure his room was decorated for holidays,” Garnell Whitfield said. “She dedicated her entire life to her family but specifically the last eight years to him.
32-year-old Roberta Drur’s mother found out she was among the list of victims after seeing her shot to death on social media, the New York Post reported.
The list continues, the 77-year-old head of a local food pantry was among the ten killed by alleged 18-year-old gunman Payton Gendron, her family confirmed.
“You don’t expect this when your mother goes grocery shopping,” said Pamela Pritchett, 55. Her mother, Pearl Young, 77, had worked as a substitute teacher and helped feed others in the city’s Central Park neighborhood before she was slain.
“On a warm day like yesterday, she’d go grocery shopping and take the bus back home,” her daughter said, adding that she visited that market often.
Young was a substitute teacher up until her death, mostly in special education.
“She taught young men like him,” the daughter said of the alleged shooter.
Also on the list is the Supermarket’s security guard Aaron Salter Jr., a 55-year-old former Buffalo cop who was killed while exchanging gunfire with the shooter.
“Today is a shock,” his son AaronSalter III said. “I’m pretty sure he saved some lives today. He’s a hero.”
Katherine Massey, another woman who went to the grocery store to shop, she was also fatally shot in the massacre.
Barbara Massey, Katherine Massey’s sister, told the newspaper, “She was a beautiful soul.”
Gendron — who posted a white supremacist manifesto online — is accused of fatally shooting ten people and wounding three others at the supermarket.
He drove from “hours away” from his home located in the predominately white Conklin, NY, to the supermarket in a primarily black neighborhood, officials said.
Discover more from Baller Alert
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
