Good morning. Today is Monday. We will follow developments in the Buffalo mass shooting. We’ll also look at four people who helped capture last month’s subway attack suspect – and are now seeking official help with their immigration issues.
Grief and anger swept through Buffalo in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest racist massacres in recent American history. The suspect, Payton Gendron, shot 13 people at a supermarket there Saturday, killing 10, officials said. Joseph Gramaglia, Buffalo police commissioner, said Sunday: “This is a man with hatred in their heart, soul and mind.
Officials said the gunman targeted the supermarket because it is in a predominantly black neighborhood. “This individual came here with the express purpose of killing as many Blacks as possible,” said Mayor Byron Brown, a Democrat who was Buffalo’s first black mayor.
The dead went shopping on Saturday afternoon. They included a 65-year-old woman who was there to buy strawberries for a short cake and a 32-year-old woman who stopped by to pick something up for dinner. And that’s the security guard, 55-year-old Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police officer.
A bullet from Salter’s gun entered the attacker, but the gunman wearing a bulletproof vest stopped him. He is said to have published a lengthy article expressing admiration for an ideology of white supremacy known as alternative theory.
President Biden condemned the attack and called on the nation to “address the hatred that remains a stain on the soul of America.” A White House official said Biden has spoken with Governor Kathy Hochul and has reached out to Mayor Brown.
The pain that engulfs Buffalo extends far beyond the state’s second-largest city and is tinged with anger — and fear. Stand outside Canaanite Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, Anthony Means, 52, laments the toxic mix of a culture of intolerance and gun violence. He said there was all the more reason to be concerned if the Supreme Court dismissed it New York restrictions on carrying guns in public.
“I was just wondering, what does that mean?” he say. “Will people decide to pick up guns and solve their problems that way?”
Law enforcement officials said the suspect, who has been charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty Saturday night, carried out the attack after traveling halfway across the state from rural Conklin, NY. , he acquired the weapon he used in Endicott, NY. , the owner of a gun shop there said, he conducted a background check before selling guns.
Robert Donald, the gun shop owner, said of the suspect: “He was unremarkable, because if he did, I would never have sold him a gun.”
Gramaglia, the Buffalo police commissioner, said the suspect was given a mental health assessment after making “generalized threats” at his high school last year. “There is no information on state police intelligence,” Gramaglia said, “no information on FBI intelligence.”
Weather
Prepare for the possibility of showers and thunderstorms to continue into the evening, with temperatures near the mid-70s during the day and highs of 50s at night.
Parking next door
Valid until May 26 (Ascension).
An annual rally in memory of a Palestinian-American television station
In what is known as “Little Palestine” in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn – a neighborhood with one of the largest populations of Palestinians in the city – Palestinian-Americans have planned to hold their annual celebration of the what they called nakba, or disaster, occurred when hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee or were evicted from their homes when Israel was founded in 1948. The murder of a popular Palestinian-American television station in Israel The occupied West Bank last week added a layer of grief to Sunday’s gathering.
The reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed while covering an Israeli raid on Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian witnesses said Abu Akleh, a longtime reporter for the Al Jazeera news channel, was shot by Israeli soldiers. But Israeli officials said she may have been hit by Palestinian or Israeli bullets.
“This represents the daily brutality faced by Palestinians,” one of the Bay Ridge protest organizers, Nerdeen Kiswani, said as she stood near a table decorated with flowers, candles and Abu Akleh’s photo. She reiterated a statement from Al Jazeera, which called the killing a “blatant murder” in violation of international law.
The group then marched down 5th Avenue. It was a short time until the police, who had blocked the intersection on 72nd Street, let the marchers continue.
New York’s top news
Seeking immigration protection after helping arrest subway attack suspect
Four people helped investigators after the New York City subway attack last month. Will that be enough to convince immigration authorities to grant them visas or asylum?
One person – a 37-year-old woman who asked to be identified only by her last name, Flores – was a passenger on the train where the gunman opened fire. She gave the police her cell phone. On it are videos she filmed in the chaos after the shooting. She has no papers.
The other three were working on surveillance cameras at a hardware store in Manhattan’s East Village the day after the shooting. They recognized the suspect, Frank James, as he passed, and they flagged the police officers.
One was an undocumented Mexican immigrant. Another is a Lebanese student. The third was Zack Tahhan, a 22-year-old Syrian-American who enthusiastically told how their call to the police made him a viral fever. “We are proud of what we have done,” he told my colleague Ashley Southall. “But now we’re worried about our families.”
The four and their attorneys are currently in the early stages of applying for visas and humanitarian aid for victims, witnesses and informants helping law enforcement.
Rifat Harb, a lawyer representing Tahhan, a US citizen, in his quest to reunite with his parents, who are refugees in Turkey, said the US should follow the lead. Leaders of other countries welcome immigrants to show heroic deeds – as France did when it granted citizenship to a Malian people climb on the facade of an apartment building to save a toddler dangling from a balcony in 2018.
Such a shortcut seems unlikely in the United States. Lawmakers have introduced 505 so-called private bills to grant citizenship or permanent residency to individuals in the past 15 years, but only three have been enacted, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Custom. Undocumented immigrants, even veterans, are more likely to face deportation.
Luis Gomez Alfaro, Flores’ attorney, plans to ask the immigration court in Buffalo to lift the deportation order issued after immigration officers raided an Amtrak train on which she was a passenger in 2000. She said she never received the hearing notice and did not learn about the order until years later.
Gomez Alfaro also said that the city should expedite the paperwork to support her U visa application, specifically for crime victims. Congress has set a limit of 10,000 U visas a year, and there is a 5-year backlog.
Francisco Puebla, the Mexican immigrant among the four, was the manager of the hardware store where Tahhan and Mohamad Cheikh had located the surveillance cameras as James walked past. Gomez Alfaro, who also represents him, said Puebla’s role could make him eligible for an S visa for informants, but only 250 are offered each year.
What we are reading
Dear Diary:
I was rushing to a concert when I stopped at a food truck to order nachos.
I kept walking on Upper Broadway until I found a bench where I could sit and eat.
Oh no! There’s no fork in my pocket. A light rain began to fall, I bent to the side with my tattered raincoat pulled over me and started eating nachos with my hands.
Suddenly, I realized someone was standing in front of me.
Looking up, I saw an elderly woman holding a pristine plastic fork wrapped in cellophane.
I thank her very much. She responded by producing three napkins.
– Jeanine Briefel
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
So glad we can get together here. See you tomorrow. – JB
PS This is for today Small crosswords and Spell Bee. You can find all our quizzes here.
Melissa GuerreroJeff Boda, Sean Piccoli and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
