A gunman with racist motives opened fire at a Buffalo grocery store Saturday, killing 10 people and injuring three others, authorities said.
Police said the man was heavily armed and in tactical gear during a news conference on Saturday night. According to police, he jumped out of his car and shot four people in the parking lot, killing three of them.
He then went into the store and continued to shoot, exchanging fire with a security guard, who he killed and then hit several customers, police said. He was eventually arrested by police officers after holding a gun to his neck and threatening to shoot himself.
Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said the gunman had racist motives. “This is a complete crime,” he said at a news conference. “This is a straight up racially motivated hate crime.” Police said the gunman was white and the attack took place in a predominantly Black area of the city.
Police said 11 of the shooting victims were Black; two white ones.
Mayor Byron Brown said the shooting had devastated the city, as innocent people going about their normal routines “lost their lives instantly for no reason”.
“This is the worst nightmare any community can face and we are traumatized and we are seething right now as a community,” the mayor said.
The gunman was armed with an assault weapon and armor, and he had a helmet-mounted video camera that was live-streaming the shooting, police said. In the minutes and hours after the shooting happened, gruesome videos and images allegedly captured by the gunman went viral on social media. In the photos, it appears that a racial slur was written on the barrel of his weapon.
US attorney in Buffalo, Trini E. Ross, said her office will investigate murders such as hate crime.
Jaye Emmons, a 49-year-old social worker who lives a block and a half from Tops, was watching a YouTube video of a romantic breakup between two celebrities when “suddenly there was a lot of footage,” she said in a phone interview from a nail salon across from Tops. Ms. Emmons estimated that she heard 60 shots.
“What I heard was loud — bullets fired aimlessly, fired from military weapons,” she said.
She added that she could tell that the shooting came from Jefferson Avenue, the location of the Tops store.
She said a relative visited the site of the shooting and returned to say he had learned that the gunman had started shooting in the parking lot outside the grocery store, entered the store and continued shooting, then escaped, at which point he was handcuffed by authorities.
