BUFFALO, New York—On Saturday, 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield had just left the nursing home where for eight years she had tended to her husband, Garnell—ensuring his nails were trimmed, his clothes were pressed, his face was shaved—when she encountered an apparent white supremacist gunman at the Tops Friendly Market who senselessly took her life.
During the mass shooting, 18-year-old Payton Gendron also killed nine other people and injured three more, in what Erie County Sheriff John Garcia referred to as a “straight up racially motivated hate crime.”
“My mother was murdered yesterday and didn’t deserve it. Her along with the other victims,” Whitfield's son, retired Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr., told The Daily Beast. “We are certainly grieving, we’re certainly going to miss her and don’t know how we’re going to get through this. But we have a strong faith, hope, and belief in Jesus Christ and each other as a family.”
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According to 7 News, Whitfield Jr. had traveled to the scene of the mass shooting after hearing about it, only to discover that his own mother was among the dead. “She was a wonderful mother. She loved us, her family, unconditionally,” he told The Daily Beast. “She was our hero.”
A day after the massacre, Ruth’s husband had not yet been told that his wife was dead.
Whitfield Jr. emphasized his family’s concern that the violence “is called what it is,” referring to white supremacy. “This guy who perpetuated this evil is a product of the system. He was born of this system. He was taught to hate. He was taught to expect privilege,” he said.
“White supremacy is a cancer on our nation in our world,” he continued. “That’s just the fact of the matter. I’m not condemning all white people, obviously. Not at all. But there are a group of persons in the world who are hell-bent on maintaining their advantage over all of the rest of us.”
Police released the names of the other nine victims on Sunday. They are: Roberta Drury, 32; Margus Morrison, 52; Andre Mackneil, 53; Geraldine Talley, 62; Katherine Massey, 72; Aaron Salter Jr., 55; Pearl Young, 77; Celestine Chaney, 65; and Heyward Patterson, 67.
Those with non-life threatening injuries were 20-year-old Zaire Goodman, 50-year-old Jennifer Warrington, and 55-year-old Christopher Braden.
“YOU DID NOT DESERVE THIS!!!!” pastor and Buffalo native Jimmie Smith wrote on Facebook, along with a picture of Young.
Friends of Young say she ran a food pantry in Buffalo Central Park every Saturday where she helped feed the city’s less fortunate. “She loved singing, dancing and being with her family,” Madison Carter, a local journalist, posted on Twitter.
According to an article published by AL.com, Young was an Alabama native who “moved to New York as a young adult and married a pastor there.” Just before the shooting, she had lunch with her sister-in-law who then dropped her at the supermarket. The outlet noted that she had three children and numerous grandchildren.
Victim Katherine Massey’s sister Barbara told The Buffalo News that she had just spoken to her sister who was running to the grocery store to pick up a few items. “She was a beautiful soul,” the sister told a reporter by text.
Known as “jitney” to his friends because he gave “people rides to and from Tops and [helped] them with their groceries,” Heyward Patterson was reportedly assisting an elderly woman with her items when he was shot on Saturday.
“He was a deacon and my best friend,” Tony Sanders, one of his friends, told The Buffalo News.
Wayne Jones told The New York Times his mother, 65-year-old Celestine Chaney—a single mom who had once worked at a suit manufacturer—was visiting her sister on Saturday. The pair had decided to make a quick stop at the supermarket to pick up strawberries to make strawberry shortcake.
“She loved those,” Jones said, adding that his mother’s sister was able to take refuge in a freezer, “but my mom cannot really walk like she used to... She basically can’t run.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” a friend of Chaney, Gladys Robinson, told The Daily Beast. “She was a nice person, that’s all I can say, and I am so sorry this happened to her.”
Another victim, Salter Jr. spent three decades on the Buffalo police force before taking up work as a security guard at Tops. Authorities said the retired cop had unholstered his gun and shot at Gendron, but the extremist’s body armor protected him. Gendron fired back at Salter Jr., killing him.
“Today is a shock,” his son, Aaron Salter III, told The Daily Beast on Saturday in Lockport, a suburb of Buffalo. “I’m pretty sure he saved some lives today. He’s a hero.”
