Attorney who represented George Floyd's family will represent family of slain Buffalo woman

Attorney Ben Crump of Washington, D.C., will represent the family of Ruth Elizabeth Whitfield, 86, one of 10 people killed in Saturday’s supermarket massacre on Jefferson Avenue.

“We are thoroughly investigating the shooting and the events leading up to it. These grieving families deserve to know how a white supremacist, so vocal about his hatred, was able to carry out a premeditated and targeted act of terrorism against Black people – all while armed with an assault rifle fitted with a high-capacity magazine,” Crump said in a statement issued by his law firm Sunday afternoon.

Crump’s co-counsels will be Terrence M. Connors of Buffalo, and Ken Abbarno, a Cleveland attorney who has worked with Crump on other civil rights cases.

“We’ll be looking into all aspects of this shooting and all the events along the way that might have prevented this tragedy from occurring in our community,” Connors told The Buffalo News. “We’ll be digging deep into the shooter, the gun, where he purchased it, the illegal high-capacity magazine that was attached to the gun and how it was obtained. We’ll also be looking into digital media platforms that may have inspired or provoked this shooting.”

Several other families from the supermarket shooting incident have spoken to the same legal team about possible lawsuits, Connors said.

The accused killer in the Tops shootings – Payton Gendron, 18, of Conklin, near Binghamton – is a white supremist who issued a lengthy manifesto in which he said social media sites inspired his beliefs.

Crump has earned a national reputation for representing the families of Black shooting victims.

In the case of George Floyd, he obtained a $27 million settlement from the City of Minneapolis after police officers from that city choked Floyd to death during an incident in May 2020.

In his press statement, Crump called the Buffalo massacre “the deadliest mass shooting of 2022, perpetrated by a self-proclaimed white supremacist who set out to do one thing: kill Black people.”

He said Ruth Whitfield, “a beloved wife, mother and grandmother, was the primary caretaker of her husband and was coming back from visiting him at a nursing home when this sick, depraved individual brutally murdered her at the grocery store.”