BUFFALO, NY — Marcus Morris said he had to pray before getting out of his vehicle and walking toward Tops Friendly Markets, where 10 people, including his uncle, were killed in a racist mass shooting last year.
Another customer, Kevin Samuels, said he could “feel the presence of the situation” when he walked through the door of the Buffalo grocery store.
Tuesday, the day before the gunman is scheduled to be sentenced on murder, hate crime and other state charges, marked the first time both men had been in Tops since the May 14 shooting that killed Ruth Whitfield, Pearly Young, Katherine Massey, Roberta Drury, Heyward Patterson, Celestine Chaney, Andre Mackneil, Geraldine Talley, Aaron Salter, and Margus Morrison, Morris’s uncle.
Three other people were injured.
“Your chest definitely feels a little heavy just pulling. I sat in the car and said a little prayer before I got out for all the victims, especially my uncle,” said Morris, 27, of East Buffalo.
“You can’t stop thinking about it when you go there,” he added.
Morris said he knew about the sentence but it was not a factor in his decision to go to the store.
Samuels said she used to shop at Tops, the only accessible supermarket on the east side of Main Street, “quite often” but stopped after the shooting because she needed time to recover.
Authorities have said the gunman, Payton Gendron, was dressed in tactical gear when he opened fire on Tops, which he broadcast on the social media platform Twitch before the broadcast was cancelled.
He fatally shot three people and wounded one in the parking lot before entering Tops, where Salter, a store security guard, confronted him, authorities said. Authorities said Salter’s rounds did not appear to penetrate Gendron’s ballistic equipment and that the gunman shot and killed him before he fired at others.
A document Gendron, who is white, posted online claimed he had become radicalized and appeared to adhere to the “false replacement” theory, which white killers have used to justify violence against Muslims, Latinos and Jews around the world.
He has pleaded guilty to more than a dozen state charges, including 10 counts of first-degree murder. He also faces 27 federal charges, including murder, firing a firearm and hate crimes. Eleven of the 13 people shot were black; the other two were white.
Samuels, 53, who has lived in Buffalo for about four years, said what happened was “painful.”
A Buffalo native, who declined to give her name, said the past nine months have been difficult to process. Before the massacre, the 61-year-old woman visited Tops several times a month. Tuesday’s visit was her fourth time inside the store since it reopened.
“I think twice about coming to this Tops,” he said. “The thought of all those lives lost is really depressing.”
He returned for the first time in November. She said that she was paranoid and that her heart was beating fast and that she kept looking over her shoulder.
She feels more comfortable going to the store now, but she said everyday sounds, like a car screeching in a parking lot, give her anxiety.
Robert Archie, 66, has been a loyal customer since the store opened on Jefferson Avenue in 2003. He has lived minutes from the store for the past 14 years.
She typically shops at Tops three to four times a day, picking up last-minute meals or grabbing items for family members. On the day of the shooting, he skipped his normal routine.
“Fortunately, I wasn’t there that day,” he said. “At any time on that day she would have been here.”
Archie said that what happened to his community was painful, but he refuses to let the gunshots keep him away. He bought back at Tops two days after it reopened in July. His wife, however, has not returned.
“This is my store. I have no doubts,” she said, adding: “Just hope something like this doesn’t happen again.”
