The Editorial Board: Horror in Buffalo – A terrible day will leave scars for many. They need the comfort this city can offer.

This time, it happened here.

“We are hurting, and we are seething right now as a community,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said.

It is a righteous and jumbled anger, crosscut with alarm and heartbreak and confusion about how to express it all.

Anger that someone hardly out of childhood was so consumed with racial hatred that he traveled for hours to murder strangers in Buffalo. So say municipal and law enforcement officials.

Alarm that the horrors that have afflicted other parts of the country – in Orlando, in Las Vegas, at Sandy Hook – have now broken into our city.

Heartbreak for the 10 people massacred at the Tops market on Jefferson Avenue and for their families, friends and neighbors. How is it that so routine an errand as grocery shopping can be so fateful a decision?

Confusion at trying to make sense of an 18-year-old wearing body armor and livestreaming as he fires a high-powered rifle at people whose only mistake was to be in the way of an adolescent consumed with hatred and bent on bloodletting. Four of those who were killed worked at the store. One, a recently retired Buffalo police officer, was a security guard. He tried to stop the shooter and paid with his life.

Said Erie County Sheriff John Garcia, “It was straight up, a racially motivated hate crime.”

The suspect, Payton Gendron, is white. Of 13 people shot, 11 were Black.

“This person,” he said, “was pure evil.”

Where does that come from?

Gendron was arrested at the scene and quickly arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder.

Other questions arise. What drove this person to kill people he didn’t even know? Why Buffalo? Where did he get the body armor and the rifle? Were any clues missed that could have prevented this cruel attack? Did he have accomplices? Is he known to police in his area?

And: How do we prevent these horrific shootings from happening? Do we once again shrug and just go on about things, pretending that it won’t happen again?

We will know more in the days and weeks ahead, but for some, the weeks will be difficult, especially those who lost loved ones on Saturday. For them, family, friends and counselors may provide solace and support. They will need it. Buffalonians know how to provide it.

For others, what is important is patience as police and prosecutors work through the evidence and push for whatever kind of justice is available. Whatever that may be, it won’t atone for what was done.

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