Community holds vigil, protests in wake of racially motivated mass shooting

Pastors from many area churches were joined by Muslim and Jewish leaders, community activists, neighborhood residents and other supporters to call for unity, condemn racism and pray for healing.

“Yes, we are angry,” said the Rev. Charles Walker, who helped organize the vigil. “I have individuals who have just come home from prison calling me at 3:30 a.m. and saying, ‘We want to step up.’ And I say, 'For what? This is not our job to fight. Our job is to continue to love and support one another. ' ”

The Rev. Denise Walden-Glen said she spent until 11 p.m. Saturday with families who gathered at Stanley Makowski Early Childhood Center to find out if anyone they knew were among the 10 people killed and three wounded in the racially motivated shooting.

“Many, many people in this area knew and were close to individuals who work and shop in that store,” she said. “Some of the victims had no ID on them, and as we received information, there were no words to express the pain. For every family that got a call that a loved one was OK, there was someone who got a call that their loved one is no longer here.”

Walden-Glen and other pastors stood in the center of a growing crowd and alternated between leading them in prayer and leading chants of “Black lives matter," “This is what community looks like" and "Whose streets? Our streets!"

Many described the East side neighborhood as a food desert and the Tops supermarket as “our store,” where they knew everyone, helped each other shop and gave each other rides to get there.

Tony Sanders, 68, came to the vigil to honor his friend Heyward Patterson, whose first name is listed as Haywood in a church directory. People knew him as a “jitney” who would give people rides to and from Tops and help them with their groceries. Sanders said Patterson was loading a woman's groceries into his car when she became the first person shot, and he the second.

“He was a deacon and my best friend,” Sanders said of Patterson, who died in the shooting.

Tonie Sanders said she came to the vigil because she considers the store “my Tops.” She also knew Patterson, who she said would see her in the store and ask her if she could give someone a ride home.

“He was a wonderful man, and I am so sad this happened,” she said.

She said the Cold Spring neighborhood is a close-knit community where people help each other.

“I am frightened because in the past we have had our struggles with race, but today this community is a melting pot with people from Bangladesh to Pakistan to India to Sierra Leone,” she said. “We all get along and try to have a nice life, but he came and disrupted it, and now it will put everyone on guard. Now you won’t know who you can trust anymore, and I don’t want that to happen.”

Walker, the Rev. James Giles and the Rev. Mark Blue, president of the NAACP, led the gathering in singing “Amazing Grace.” Walden-Glen announced that pastors and Red Cross counselors would staff the Johnnie Wiley Pavilion today until 9 p.m. and Monday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. to provide comfort and counseling to friends and families affected by the trauma.

Walden-Glen expressed what many people were feeling when she described Saturday's shooting as the result of historic efforts to keep Black communities down.

"It was an 18, 19-year-old boy who came up here, and his heart was so full of hate that he came to kill us," she told the crowd. "Someone knew enough to enter the one store that we have here to shatter our world and devastate our community. While we are talking about increasing the police budget by $5.4 million – we need to talk about where to invest that money into our communities and our people."

"Black people, let's stop blaming each other," she continued to a chorus of "Amens."

"I don't want to hear one more thing about the gang violence in our community," she said. "I don't want to hear one more thing about the drugs in our community. We didn't bring the drugs in and we didn't bring the guns in. We live with it every day. If you want our babies to put the guns down, give them programs, put money into their schools, give them something constructive to do and stop trying to destroy our communities."

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Giles, of Back to Basics Ministries and coordinator of the Buffalo Peacemakers, said his group's goal is to repeal laws that allow sales of assault weapons to civilians.

“This kind of weapon was developed to kill people in mass numbers and yet we keep allowing people to purchase them,” he said.

“I do not hold this young man solely at fault,” he added. “He did not come into the world like that. He is a trigger, or a tool. What kind of parenting did he get to be occupied with planning something like this at age 18? So I will pray for him, too.”

Afterward, many in the crowd held an impromptu march around the block, while others who brought flowers assembled several shrines near the store.

Cameron Huckell, an orthopedic surgeon whose office is six blocks from the Tops market, said he would often walk there to get fried chicken for lunch. He and his friend Suzanne Morrow were going to meet for coffee, but came to the vigil instead. They were among many white faces in the crowd who came to support the community, they said.

Huckell said he feels devastated for his neighbors, but also angry that gun laws allow a teenager to buy assault weapons with no concern for what he planned to do with them.

"We don't let everyone have a personal nuclear weapon, why do they have access to a military assault weapon?" he said. "Why would someone be buying all that body armor? That should trigger a response. Thoughts and prayers aren't good enough. We need policy change."

He said white supremacists spreading hate speech should also be considered instigators of crime and terror.

"Hate speech is killing our country," Huckell said. "Words are killing us. Love is the answer and that's why I'm here."