Police walk outside the Tops grocery store on May 15, 2022, in Buffalo, New York.One year ago, Brooklyn Hough was a cashier at Tops Friendly Market, located on Buffalo’s east side. She was 22 years old and working to support her two children. Hough was just going out for her lunch break on a typical, quiet Saturday.
Brooklyn Hough, 23, is pictured in Buffalo, N.Y., Saturday, May 13, 2023. Hough was a cashier at the Tops Supermarket when the massacre that killed 10 people happened last year, and survived.In February, a state judge gave Gendron 11 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Right before the judge handed down his sentence, a family member of one victim berated the shooter and another man lunged at him, which temporarily halted the proceedings.
Hough and Carter both remember when President Joe Biden came to town in the days after the tragedy. He talked with the family members who lost loved ones and the people who were injured, though Hough wishes he had met with other people who were in the store, too. Racism existed in Buffalo long before Gendron — he wasn’t even the first killer to target the city’s Black population.
During the funeral for one of the victims, a carload of white people drove by showing a mannequin with red-painted head wounds and threw red paint on the victim’s funeral hearse.