Before 8 a.m. Sunday, waiting for the doors to open at True Bethel Baptist Church for that morning's service, a Tops employee who survived the mass shooting at the Jefferson Avenue supermarket a day earlier spoke with her fellow Buffalo residents, trying to make sense of it all while it all played out again and again in her head.
"I can't sleep. I can eat a little bit, but I just keep hearing gunshots and just seeing the bodies," said the employee, who wished to give only her first name, Latisha.
Latisha is the assistant office manager at the store, where she's worked for three years as part of a 13-year career with Tops. When the shooting started about 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Latisha hid behind the customer service counter, dialing 911 as she laid on the floor.
She whispered into the phone with the dispatcher, who asked her if she could speak up.
"Ma'am, he's still in the store," Latisha recalled saying. "He's shooting. I'm scared for my life. I don't want him to hear me."
Disconnected from the dispatcher, Latisha said she called her boyfriend and told him to call 911.
She said it felt like forever before the shooting stopped and she could leave the store, even if it was only minutes. Among the 10 killed in the shooting: Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who worked as a security guard at the Jefferson Avenue store.
"Real cool guy," Latisha said of Salter. "Didn't bother anybody. He just came to do his job. ... He was trying to save a lady and a baby, from what I've heard."
For Latisha, who left the store and stayed with people she knows in the neighborhood before her mother could come get her, the violent scene immediately brought back memories of the City Grill shooting in 2010, when a gunman opened fire at the downtown restaurant, killing four people and wounding four more.
Among those killed in the City Grill shooting: Latisha's brother, Danyell Mackin, 30.
"I was there when that happened," Latisha said. "And that was a massacre, and now I have to relive a whole other massacre."
Latisha feels like she won't be able to go back to work at the store, and she thinks of all the residents who rely on that supermarket for fresh food.
"I know a lot of the regulars," Latisha said. "I know a lot of residents that come in there. I've been here for three years. That store is very important to that community. I didn't realize how important it was until I started working there. They love that store. That is just a traumatic experience to have in that community like that."
Shoppers such as Yolanda McKinney, who usually shops at the Jefferson Avenue store every Saturday afternoon after choir practice.
Anticipating the store being crowded, McKinney decided to instead go to Rite Aid to get a money order to pay her rent. Otherwise, she would have been at Tops at the time of the shooting – as she usually would be on a normal Saturday.
McKinney said her niece and her niece's daughter were in the store during the shooting. McKinney didn't know they were alright until her niece called her back while she was in the church parking lot Sunday morning.
"It's senseless," she said. "It's sad that people can't enjoy their life because it's so easy to get guns, no matter who it is."
"And for people like her," McKinney said, standing next to Latisha outside True Bethel, "for people to get hurt for no reason at all by somebody who just didn't care, that hurts deep."
As they stood there outside the church with fellow community members, McKinney told Latisha she can call her anytime – if she just needs someone to talk to.
Coverage of this story is being provided free to all readers. Please support our journalism and the newsroom providing this coverage by subscribing to The Buffalo News.
