Ten people were killed by a gunman dressed in body armor and armed with a high-powered rifle, while three others were wounded – two of them critically – outside and inside a Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue on Saturday afternoon.
A Buffalo police official at the scene and another source close to law enforcement confirmed the massacre at the supermarket.
“It’s like walking onto a horror movie, but everything is real. It is Armageddon-like,” said the police official at the scene. “It is so overwhelming.”
One of the deceased was a recently retired Buffalo police officer who was working security at the store, both sources said.
“Bullets and blood are everywhere,” the source said.
Shonnell Harris, an operation manager at the Tops, said she heard gun shots and ran frantically through the store, falling several times before exiting out the back. She saw the shooter, whom she described as a white man wearing camouflage. “He looked like he was in the Army.” Harris thought she heard 70 shots.
The shooter was taken into custody and placed in a police vehicle at the scene, according to the two sources.
The shooter was cloaked in body armor and had a military grade helmet on his head.
It is unknown if he offered a reason for the massacre.
Video posted on Twitter showed two Buffalo Police officers with a man who appears to be in custody just outside the Tops store. The man is a white male dressed in camouflage pants, wearing what appears to be a mask over his mouth. The News has not been able to confirm that the person in custody in the video was the shooter.
Immediately after the shooting, Braedyn Kaphart and Shayne Hill said they came almost face to face with the shooter as they were turning their Equinox into a parking space in the Tops parking lot.
