Vice President Harris speaks at a memorial service for Ruth Whitfield, victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting, at Olive Mountain Baptist Church on Saturday in Buffalo, NY
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Vice President Harris speaks at a memorial service for Ruth Whitfield, victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting, at Olive Mountain Baptist Church on Saturday in Buffalo, NY
Patrick Semansky / AP
BUFFALO, NY – The last of 10 Blacks killed in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket with a service on Saturday have become a rallying cry. action and an emotional call to end the hatred and violence that beset the country.
The funeral of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield – the oldest of 10 people killed in the attack two weeks ago – featured an impromptu speech by Vice President Kamala Harris. She attended service at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Buffalo with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
Harris told mourners it was time for “all good people” to stand up against the injustice that happened at Tops Friendly Market on May 14, as well as Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas , and other mass shootings.
“This is a time that requires all good people, all God-loving people to stand up and say we’re not going to support this. Enough is enough,” said Harris, who was not expected to develop. expression and come in front of the speaking microphone. at the urging of Father Al Sharpton. “We will come together based on what we know we have in common, and we will not let people who are motivated by hate on us or make us feel fear.”
After the funeral, Harris and Emhoff visited a memorial outside the supermarket. The vice president left a large bouquet of white flowers at the site, and the couple stopped to pray for a few minutes. President Biden and first lady Jill Biden laid flowers at the memorial on May 17 and visited the families of the victims. Biden is expected to travel to Texas later this week to visit the families of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting.
Harris later told reporters that the administration was not “waiting to find a solution” to the nation’s gun violence problem.
“We know what’s up there,” she said, reiterating support for background checks and an assault weapons ban. Harris says the country must also come together.
“We have to agree that if we want to be a strong nation, we must stand firm, defining our diversity as our unity,” she said.
It’s been a sad goodbye week for my family and friends Buffalo shooting victim, a group including a restaurant worker went to the market to buy his 3rd birthday cake; a father and die-hard Buffalo Bills fan who served as a school bus assistant; and a 32-year-old sister move to the city to help a brother who is battling leukemia.
Whitfield, a mother and mother of four, was entering the supermarket after visiting her 68-year-old husband in a nursing home when a gunman, identified by police as 18-year-old Payton Gendron, began the attack. deadly work.
A mourner hugs Angela Crawley, left, daughter of Ruth Whitfield, a victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting, before a memorial service at Olive Mountain Baptist Church.
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Patrick Semansky / AP
A mourner hugs Angela Crawley, left, daughter of Ruth Whitfield, a victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting, before a memorial service at Olive Mountain Baptist Church.
Patrick Semansky / AP
Authorities said Gendron, who is white, targeted the store three hours away from his home in Conklin because it was located in a predominantly Black residential area.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who paid tribute to Whitfield at the beginning of the funeral, called on all “co-conspirators” to aid and abet the “monster” who opened fire in the supermarket right. responsible, from gun manufacturers. and distributors for the suspect’s parents.
Crump said those who “guided and radicalized this young, insecure individual” should also be held accountable for taking Whitfield away from her family, the Buffalo community and the planet. He called her “one of the most angelic characters we’ve ever known.”
Crump said, referring to the victims: “It is a sin that this corrupt man, not a boy, killed Ruth Whitfield and ‘Buffalo 10’.”
Sharpton described being sunk when he learned the gunman had live-streamed his attack on Twitch, noting how his mother grew up in Alabama, where hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan used to kill Negroes.
Today, he said, white supremacists “proudly commit racist conduct.”
Sharpton laid out gun control measures in his eulogy, saying all communities needed to unite and “disarm the haters”.
“There is an epidemic of racial violence that is tolerated by gun laws that allow people to kill us,” he said. “You don’t have to love us, but you shouldn’t have easy access to military weapons to kill us.”
In total, 13 people were shot in the attack, which federal authorities are investigating as a hate crime. Three survivors.
Whitfield is the mother of former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield.
Gendron has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bail. His lawyer pleaded not guilty on his behalf.
