Buffalo mayor declares families of Tops mass shooting victims “heroes” ahead of one-year anniversary
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It has been almost one year since the deadly massacre at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York. As previously reported by REVOLT, 10 Black people were fatally gunned down on May 14, 2022 by confessed killer Payton S. Gendron — a white male who claimed he committed the targeted attack “for the future of the white race.”
Today (May 12), victims’ loved ones filed a wrongful death lawsuit in State Supreme Court against several social media companies. According to ABC News, the documents claim, “Gendron was motivated to commit his heinous crime by racist, anti-Semitic, and white supremacist propaganda fed to him by the social media companies whose products he used.”
Buffalo attorney John Elmore filed the motion on behalf of Heyward Patterson, Katherine “Kat” Massey and Andre Mackniel. The three had loved ones who were killed on that fateful day. Massey’s sister told the outlet, “I’m hoping that something will come out of it. Every day or every few days, all you hear about is a mass shooting. You’ve got to start somewhere, in order for them to get the message. These big companies only know one thing, money. So, you’ve got to hurt them. How many people do you want to see dead?”
Byron Brown, the first Black mayor of Buffalo, remembered the lives lost ahead of the massacre’s anniversary. “I thought, why?” he said. “These were innocent people just grocery shopping. A lot of them seniors. Some that didn’t even have the ability to run away from the shooter. It was a very painful, very painful experience. I can tell you that my place to express that pain was in the shower, in the morning, or at night, where I just let the… tears flow. And the water from the shower would wash them away,” he expressed.
Brown added, “I think about what the families have gone through, the depth of their loss. And I might be curled up in a ball — not able to get up, not wanting to come out. But they keep getting up. They keep coming out. They keep speaking out. They keep working to make a difference and to try to create a society, to try to help build a nation where this doesn’t happen to other people and their families. And to me, that’s the mark of true courage. And all of these family members to me are heroes.”
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