Bells toll on anniversary of Buffalo massacre

BUFFALO, New York — A bell chimed 13 times as people paused for a moment of silence on Sunday to remember the 10 people killed and three wounded in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket one year ago.

Mayor Byron Brown read the names of the victims outside Tops Friendly Market, where a self-declared white supremacist gunman opened fire on May 14 last year. Politicians including State Governor Kathy Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also attended the remembrance, which fell on Mother's Day.

"It's a beautiful day. It's Mother's Day," Hochul said. "And the cruel irony behind the fact is a day we celebrate a life that comes into this world, making someone a mother, is also a day we're here to think about those who are no longer with us. It's hard. It's been a really hard year."

In the year since the shooting, relatives of the victims have spoken before Congress about white supremacy and gun reform and organized events to address food insecurity that worsened when the market, the neighborhood's only grocery store, was closed for two months.

United States President Joe Biden honored the lives of those killed in Buffalo in an op-ed published on Sunday in USA Today. He called on Congress and state legislative leaders to act by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring background checks for all gun sales and repealing gun manufacturers' immunity from liability.

Gun control organizations and advocates held nearly 200 events nationwide over the weekend, calling on Congress to reinstate a bipartisan assault weapons ban.

In Buffalo, Wayne Jones, whose mother Celestine Chaney, 65, died in the attack, urged the city and its institutions to keep on investing in the area and its residents even after the anniversary events are over. That is why he is willing "to keep opening up this wound that I have" and talk about it, he said.

Inside the store fountains flank a poem dedicated to the victims. The store was closed on Sunday in remembrance of the shooting.

Gun violence

More than 215 mass shootings have occurred in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an NGO.

Two people were killed and five others injured on Saturday in a shooting in Yuma, a US-Mexico border city in Arizona, authorities said on Sunday.

Police responded to a report of shots fired in a neighborhood at about 11 pm and found several people with gunshot wounds, the Yuma Police Department said in a news release.

Two men aged 19 and 20 were pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly after being sent there, it said. A third victim, a 16-year-old male, was sent to the hospital with life-threatening injuries and later flown to Phoenix, the state capital, for further treatment.

The other victims, ages 15, 19, 18, and 16, had non-life-threatening injuries.

An investigation was underway, officials said, and no suspects were in custody at the time of the news release.

Agencies - Xinhua