What we know so far about the victims of the racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo | CBC News

Officials and family members have begun to release the identities of the 10 people killed in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday.

CBC is working to identify victims while trying to ensure their next of kin have been notified before publishing their names.

Roberta Drury

Roberta Drury was “vibrant, outgoing and could talk to anyone,” her older sister Amanda Drury told CBC News, confirming her sister’s death.

Robert Drury had moved from the family’s hometown of Syracuse, N.Y., to Buffalo around 2010 to be with her older brother after he underwent treatment for leukemia.

Aaron Salter

Security guard Aaron Salter fired multiple shots at the gunman, hitting his armour at least once, before Salter himself was shot dead, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia confirmed.

“He’s a true hero,” Gramaglia said Sunday. “There could have been more victims if not for his actions.”

Salter was a retired Buffalo police officer that locals described as a beloved community member who knew the shoppers of Tops Friendly Market by name.

“He cared about the community. He looked after the store,” said Yvette Mack, who had shopped at the Tops supermarket on Saturday before the shooting.

She remembered him as someone who “let us know if we was right or wrong.”

Mack would walk to the store to play lottery numbers and shop and said she spoke to Salter shortly before the shooting.

“I was playing my numbers. He said, ‘I see you’re playing your numbers!’ I laughed. And he was playing his numbers too. Can you imagine seeing someone and you don’t know he’s not going to go home?

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‘We have to do better,’ N.Y. congressman says after Buffalo mass shooting

New York Rep. Brian Higgins says more needs to be done after a racially motivated mass shooting by a white gunman killed 10 people and wounded three others in Buffalo on Saturday.

Ruth Whitfield

Ruth Whitfield, 86, was the mother of retired Buffalo fire commissioner Garnell Whitfield, who was seen at the shooting scene Saturday, looking for his mother. She was confirmed as a victim later in the day.

Ruth Whitfield had just returned from visiting her husband at a nursing home, as she did every day, when she stopped in at Tops to buy a few groceries and was killed, her son told The Buffalo News.

She was “a mother to the motherless” and “a blessing to all of us,” her son said. He attributed her strength and commitment to family to her strong religious faith.

“She inspired me to be a man of God, and to do whatever I do the best I could do. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her,” Whitfield said.

Katherine Massey

Katherine Massey was shopping at the store when she was killed. Her sister, Barbara Massey, called her “a beautiful soul.”