TUESDAY, MAY 17 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
wait. Or the clenching of the
purses. Just the way you’re
looked at.”
Her cousin, 67, known to the
family as Boy Tenny, was a regular
at Tops, often driving members of
his church to the store, helping
them load their groceries into his
car and then taking them home.
“That’s what he did all the time,”
Deborah Patterson said. “That’s
what he loved to do.”
And now he’s gone, at the hand
of someone who hated him and
didn’t know him. “I just don’t
understand how at the age of 18 —
how did he get so much hate in
such a short period of life?” Debo-
rah Patterson wondered. “That
18-year-old child, if he was Black,
would not have survived. I mean,
just to be honest, the police
wouldn’t have handled it that
way. It was different, very differ-
ent.”
For the surviving families,
there were more questions than
answers. For many who live in the
shadow of an expressway that cut
a Black neighborhood apart — as
happened in so many American
cities in the middle of the last
century: the Cross Bronx Express-
way in New York, I-95 in Miami,
the Southeast-Southwest Ex-
pressway in Washington — this
was one more assault on them
simply for being born Black.
They met this one as they had
so many before, with pain and
anguish, courage and conviction.
Rinniey Baker, 57, a Tops work-
er for 21 years, left the store half
an hour before the attack, chatted
with a co-worker in the parking
lot for a bit and finally went on
her way a few minutes before the
killings. On Sunday she was back,
standing with colleagues and
promising, amid people on mega-
phones preaching the dangers of
racism, amid makeshift memori-
als overflowing with flowers, that
she would return to work, no
question.
“When they open up,” she said,
“I’m walking back in the store
because God did not give me a
spirit of fear, but a sound mind.”
The gunman “is not going to ruin
my love for my community. I’m
here for the long haul.”Aidan Joly in Buffalo and Natalie
Compton, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel,
Jasmine Hilton, Maria Paul and
Brittany Shammas in Washington
contributed to this report.32, who was killed in the shoot-
ings, put out a statement, remem-
bering how she cared for her
brother, who is recovering from
cancer, and listing the names of
her parents and her five siblings,
and then they said this:
“Our family is extra saddened
that in the 10 years since Sandy
Hook, nothing has changed with
gun violence.”
Deborah Patterson grew up
“pretty much sheltered from” the
racism of daily life, she said. Now,
after her cousin Heyward Patter-
son was killed by the gunman at
Tops, she’s thinking about her
daily experience of race in a dif-
ferent way.
“It’s something that was pretty
much new to me as a grown
woman,” she said. “The locking of
people’s doors — you can be
getting out of your car going to
Walmart, and I guess they’re pre-
paring to get out of their vehicle
and they see you coming and theyshooter hated them for the color
of their skin.
“This is not isolated in our
community,” Timothy Brown,
senior pastor at Mt. Zion Baptist
Church in Niagara Falls, told the
crowd at a prayer vigil the day
after the killings. “It’s been hap-
pening for over 400 years.”
There were angry voices, peo-
ple who sought retribution for
the killings. “I had young men,
20 of them over here saying, ‘I
want to burn down this Tops,’
and I have to go to them and say,
‘Why?’” said Murray Holman,
who leads the Buffalo Peacemak-
ers, a neighborhood safety
group. “They say: ‘Something
happened that was horrific. We
don’t want that. We don’t want
that reminder.’
“And I say, ‘Well, that's not the
answer. We need it. Let's just
work on it.’”
But were there answers?
The family of Roberta Drury,Cops with guns drawn shouted
at the people in the conference
room to sprint out the store’s rear
exit. When Atkinson, the cashier,
arrived home, she scooped up her
son, nearly fell onto her couch
and held him close. “I told my
boyfriend,” she said: “'I don’t
want to talk about it right now. I
just want to hold my son.'”
At Tops, Lamont Thomas and
daughter Londin were still in the
dairy section, hiding in the milk
coolers until police evacuated
them to the store’s south side
almost 20 minutes after the
shooting.
Harwell, Londin’s mother, was
clear across the market, evacuat-
ed by police to Tops’ north side,
and had no idea where her family
was.
It took 10 more excruciating
minutes before they were reunit-
ed. They walked home, a few
blocks away.
“I just cried the rest of the day,”
Harwell said. Their daughter
handled the aftermath better
than either parent, they said.
“She’s been talking to me, keep-
ing me in good spirits,” Harwell
said.
“I wasn’t that scared,” said Lon-
din, wearing an ice-pop-print
dress and standing beside her
mother. “I was just scared for my
mom.”
‘This is not isolated’
On Sunday morning, Bridges
returned to the scene, where he
met a handful of other Tops work-
ers. He stared at his workplace,
now roped off with yellow caution
tape, police officers and FBI
agents swarming the big parking
lot.
He pulled a stack of price tags
out of his pocket, the ones he was
stamping onto products when the
shooting started. “I won’t set foot
back in that store again until my
mind is straight,” he said. “And
right now, it’s all over the place.
All I need to do is calm my mind
and I’ll be all right.” He said he
plans to get counseling.
On the day after, Bridges
thought about all the people who
were calling him a hero for lead-
ing others to safety. “They can call
me whatever they want to,” he
said. “I did what I had to do.”
There were heroes and there
were people who were grocery
shopping and now are dead, be-
cause they were Black and a
buffalo shootingLIBBY MARCH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Adiyah Kijini, 2, gazes at the flowers, candles, notes and other mementos at a memorial to the Tops shooting victims across the street from
the grocery store in Buffalo on Sunday. The largely African American neighborhood is grappling with the racially motivated attack.“How do I tell my son his daddy’s notcoming home? How do I as a mother make itok? Someone please tell me because Ireally don’t know.”
Tracey Maciulewicz, fiancee of shooting victim Andre Mackniel,
in a Facebook postCONTENT FROM SAFEWAYFor years, the way Americans eat has been
changing. Consumers are increasingly eating
with their health in mind and exploring whole-
food based eating approaches, like plant-based
diets.Safeway wants to make it easier and more
convenient for people to choose better options.
With their healthy eating habits in mind, the
grocer has partnered with Mealime, a meal-
planning company that consults with dieticians,
to bring a variety of recipes into the Safeway
app, giving shoppers the opportunity to try
personalized approaches to eating, including
vegan, vegetarian, keto-friendly and Paleo-
friendly meal plans.“From how people approach meal planning
to how they approach grocery shopping, a lot
of us have taken on new habits — even as the
pandemic has slowed down,” said Chenoa Bol,
RDN., Sr. Strategist of Recipe Development at
Albertsons Cos. “By providing an app that lets
you meal plan, we’re taking so much of the work
out of it.”All of the Safeway app’s recipes are developed
by a registered dietician, so it allows users to
experiment with diff erent ways of eating. “Th eapp provides a totally personalized way to
answer the question: ‘What’s for dinner?’” said
Fr aser Retallack, Senior Manager of Strategy and
Growth at Albertsons Cos., the parent company
of Safeway. “It asks people questions about
their eating habits upfront, and it then delivers a
personalized experience, whether you just don’t
like a particular ingredient, or you’re adhering to
a dietary lifestyle.”Discover the new meal
planning experience,
found in the Safeway app.A Revolution In How Americans EatFrom vegan to keto, exploring healthy approaches to eating has
never been easier