Tops manager says gunman was asked to leave store day before racist massacre

The Rev. Tim Newkirk, pastor of GYC Ministries, said his sister Shonnell Harris told authorities after the shooting that she had encountered alleged gunman Payton Gendron on Friday evening during her shift as operations manager.

The young man was “posing as a beggar” while inside the store, striking up a conversation with customers and then asking them for spare change, Newkirk told The Buffalo News. Harris asked the man to leave when she noticed he was bothering customers, he said.

She told law enforcement she believes it was the same man who entered the supermarket Saturday with an assault rifle, killing 10 people, wounding three others and forcing dozens of shoppers and employees to hide or flee for their lives, according to Newkirk.

Complete coverage: 10 killed, 3 wounded in mass shooting at Buffalo supermarket

Harris told ABC News that the young man left the store without an argument when she confronted him on Friday.

The man who was panhandling did not appear to be threatening, nor did he object to being asked to leave, Newkirk told The News in relaying what his sister told him.

The News attempted Monday to contact Harris, but Newkirk said his sister was too traumatized to talk further.

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Newkirk works to combat gang violence in the city and shops regularly at the Jefferson Avenue Tops. He arrived there Saturday just moments after the shooting stopped and Buffalo police took Gendron of Conklin, Broome County into custody.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia on Sunday said the shooter was in Buffalo the day before the shooting.

“We have identified some of the locations he was at,” Gramaglia said. “We know he did some reconnaissance on the area and in the store.”

Gramaglia in a follow-up interview with The News on Monday declined to comment on whether Gendron had been asked to leave the supermarket the day before the shooting.

In the parking lot immediately after the attack, Harris told The News the supermarket had been packed with people when the gunman arrived in camouflage and began shooting. She said she fell several times while running through the store before exiting out the back.

Harris’s daughter also works at the Tops and was in the supermarket at the time of the shooting, Newkirk said.

Harris later told police that she recognized the shooter, even though his face was covered, by his eyes and his voice, as the same man whom she had removed from the store a day earlier, Newkirk said.

“He was in there posing as a beggar and was looking for change,” said Newkirk. “She had to politely escort him out. They have a no peddling policy in the Tops, no panhandling, so she was just letting him know that this was not the place where you do that.”