A trip to the store: How Buffalo’s mass shooting reigned terror on an ordinary day

The ten who died in Buffalo's mass shooting on Saturday suffered amid the simple task of buying groceries. ``These people were just shopping,'' said a neighbour of one victim.

They were caregivers and protectors and helpers, running an errand or doing a favour or finishing out a shift when their paths crossed with a young man driven by racism and hatred and inane theories.

In a flash, the ordinariness of their day was broken at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, where in and around the supermarket’s aisles, a symbol of the mundane was transformed to a scene of mass murder.

Carts lay abandoned. Bodies littered the tile floor. Police radios crackled with calls for help.

Investigators will try, for days to come, to piece together the massacre that killed 10 people, all Black and apparently hunted for the colour of their skin.

Those who loved them are left with their memories of the lost, who suffered death amid the simple task of buying groceries.

“These people were just shopping,” said Steve Carlson, 29, mourning his 72-year-old neighbour Katherine Massey, who checked in often, giving him gifts on his birthday and at Christmas, and pressing money into his hand when he helped with yard work. “They went to go get food to feed their families.”

One came from volunteering at a food bank. Another had been tending to her husband at his nursing home. Most were in their 50s and beyond, and were destined for more, even if just the dinner they planned to make.

Shonnell Harris, a manager at the store, was stocking shelves when she heard the first of what she figured must have been more than 70 shots. She ran for the back door, stumbling a few times along the way. She wondered where her daughter, a grocery clerk, was and went around to the front of the store.