Buffalo shooting's wounds need a strong salve, residents say

Sometimes when she would exit the store, Aaron Salter Jr., the slain retired police officer who worked security at Tops, would help Washington back to her car with the grocery orders, she said.The shooter, whose racist attack deeply wounded east Buffalo’s Black community, has stolen much more than the neighborhood’s only grocery store and the sense of peace many residents felt in the cherished community gathering spot.“He took away people who did for the community, just because of the color of their skin. The neighborhoods around the Tops market are predominantly Black and impoverished.Earlier in the week, civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton pointed to racial and socioeconomic inequality that made the Tops a target for the shooter, who officials say drove hundreds of miles to find Black people to gun down.“If there wasn’t but one supermarket in the Black community, he wouldn’t have gone to Tops,” Sharpton said at a prayer vigil held in Buffalo for the victims’ families on Thursday. The local Muslim community offered prayers and chants of “We are with you” near the supermarket.Gregory Jackson Jr., a Washington-based organizer with the Community Justice Action Fund, said he came to Buffalo to help coordinate relief efforts to victims’ families and residents, who were too traumatized to ask for what they need.“A lot of folks have not even gotten close to going back to normal life yet,” he said.