You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Suspect Pleads Not Guilty to Racist Mass Murder in Buffalo Supermarket

HeadlineMay 20, 2022

In Buffalo, the first funeral will be held today for the victims of Saturday’s massacre, when an 18-year-old self-described white supremacist opened fire on a grocery store in the heart of Buffalo’s Black community. The gunman shot dead 10 people, all of whom were Black. Today’s funeral is for 68-year-old Heyward Patterson, who was a deacon at the Tabernacle Church of God. He was known for giving rides to people who needed to shop at Tops, where Saturday’s attack took place.

The suspect briefly appeared in court Thursday after a grand jury indicted him on first-degree murder charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. Families of the victims were inside the courtroom, where they faced the suspect for the first time since the weekend’s mass shooting. The FBI is also weighing federal hate crime and terrorism charges.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top