‘It was by design’: Black residents try to come to terms with horror of shooting

‘Who pushed this into his head?’ a Buffalo resident asks, while another asks, ‘What made you drive all this way and hit this?’

Vigils were held across Buffalo, New York, for the victims of the Tops Friendly shooting Sunday, as Black residents on the city’s East Side mourned and attempted to come to terms with the brief, brutal event that had been visited on the neighborhood hours earlier.

The square where the shooting took place, surrounded by vacant lots that residents said were the result of decades of segregation and systemic racism, is the community’s center, with Tops Friendly functioning as the only grocery store for the immediate area.

Continue reading...

Buffalo shooting: Biden says racist killing of 10 people ‘abhorrent to fabric of nation’

Gunman shot 11 Black and two white victims at a supermarket that he broadcast on streaming platform Twitch before surrendering

After a white 18-year-old wearing military gear and live-streaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding three others, US president Joe Biden said racially motivated hate crime was “abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation”.

Police said the attacker shot 11 Black and two white victims before surrendering to authorities in an assault he broadcast on the streaming platform Twitch. Later, he appeared before a judge in a paper medical gown and was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge. He pleaded not guilty.

Continue reading...