Walk to get groceries ends in horror for friends of Tops shooting victim Roberta Drury

Her friend, Dezzelynn McDuffie, said Drury, 32, never came back.

Soon, she saw horrifying videos that were circulating on social media that appeared to show the gunman shooting her daughter just outside the store.

"She was coming out of Tops," McDuffie said Saturday night as she waited by a line of yellow police tape stretched across her street, on the other side of Jefferson from the supermarket. "He shot her right in the head."

Another friend, Tony Marshall, a retired police officer who now drives Tops shoppers home with their groceries, tried to help, summoning a lieutenant over to try to help her get some information.

He wrapped his arms around McDuffie.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," Marshall said.

She finally learned that Drury had died at about 10 p.m. Saturday.

Sitting on her front porch on Riley Street on Sunday evening, the Tops store visible down the block, McDuffie thought about her goddaughter.

“She was just a young girl, had a lot of love to give,” said McDuffie. “That was my best friend.”

McDuffie said Drury had been in Buffalo since she was around 13 years old. Drury also has a foster brother, who McDuffie said is in the hospital fighting cancer.

McDuffie said Drury had recently gotten in touch with her biological mother.

She described Drury as someone she could talk to, someone who would help her clean up around the house – even though Drury had her own house nearby, in the area of Glenwood and Masten.

Drury also loved kids, though she had none of her own. She did have a boyfriend, McDuffie said.

“That girl was my backbone,” McDuffie said.

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