The emotional hearing was briefly cut short when a man charged towards the judge sentenced the 19-year-old white gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store last year to life in prison without the possibility of release.
The tense exchange occurred just before Payton Gendron’s sentencing for the racist shooting at Tops Friendly Markets on May 14 when the sister of the victim, Katherine Massey, addressed Gendron.
“You don’t know a damn thing about Black people. We’re human. We like our kids to go to good schools. We love our kids. We never go to no neighborhoods to take people out,” Barbara Massey told the gunman.
A man in a grey jogging suit ran towards Gendron as she continued to speak to the gunman, and she was hurried out of the courtroom. A brief intermission resulted from the authorities encircling the unnamed individual.
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At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said that the guy will not be charged, expressing to the media his understanding that the sentencing was emotionally charged. After everyone had reentered the courtroom, Judge Susan Eagan of Erie County talked about the tense period.
“I am sure that you are all disturbed by the physicality that we’ve seen in the courtroom here today. I understand that emotion. And I understand that anger. But we cannot have that in the courtroom,” she said.
“We must conduct ourselves appropriately because we are all better than that,” Eagan added. Then, victim statements continued. The atrocity, according to Christopher Braden, who was shot in the leg, changed his life. He was one of the trio of victims hurt in the attack.
Braden said he has post-traumatic stress disorder and has had four operations, and still has two more to go. “Your actions completely changed my life. … I have night terrors that jerk me awake in the middle of the night. It takes me 15 minutes to get out of bed,” he said.
In his speech to the court, Gendron expressed regret for his actions against the victims and declared that he did not want to serve as an example for anyone.
“I did a terrible thing that day. I shot and killed people because they were Black. Looking back now, I can’t believe I actually did it. I believed what I read online and acted out the hate, and now I can’t take it back, but I wish I could,” he said.
