Vice President Kamala Harris attended a Buffalo funeral Saturday for one of 10 people killed by a white supremacist earlier this month and declared, “America is experiencing an epidemic of hate.”
The vice president and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff attended the memorial service for Ruth Whitfield Saturday afternoon at Mt. Olive Baptist Church along with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Whitfield, 86, was killed in the massacre at Tops Friendly Market on May 14.
“I cannot even begin to express our collective pain as a nation for what you are feeling in such an extreme way, to not only lose someone that you love, but through an act of extreme violence and hate,” said Harris, who spoke at the urging of Sharpton. “And I do believe that our nation right now is experiencing an epidemic of hate.”
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris at the funeral of Buffalo shooting victim: "This is a moment that requires all good people…to stand up and say we will not stand for this. Enough is enough. We will come together based on what we all know we have in common." https://t.co/q0nauBhuB3 pic.twitter.com/7Jdv12w6v0
— ABC News (@ABC) May 28, 2022
Whitfield was on her way home from visiting her husband in a nursing home when she stopped to buy groceries, her son, Garnell Whitfield, told ABC News.
Whitfield is survived by her husband of 68 years, Garnell W. Whitfield Sr., her children, and numerous grandchildren. Her funeral followed services for other victims of the mass shooting that were held earlier in the week.
Harris and Emhoff met with other families of the mass shooting victims Saturday, as well as with Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown.
The 18-year-old shooter, who The Daily Wire is not naming in keeping with a policy of depriving mass shooters of undeserved notoriety, allegedly live-streamed the murder spree on Twitch. Authorities said that the suspect, who allegedly drove some three-and-a-half hours from Broome County, New York, to the market because it is frequented by African Americans, recorded the horrific spree with a camera mounted to his tactical helmet.
Authorities suspect the shooting was racially motivated, in part because the suspect is white and 11 of his 13 victims are black. The barrel of the suspect’s gun bore “the N-word” spelled out in white paint, along with the numeral 14, according to The Buffalo News. A government official told the outlet the number refers to a 14-word statement that is popular with white supremacists. The suspect also posted a 180-page document that reads like a cross between a diary and a manifesto about a half-hour before the attack. In addition to support for white supremacy, the suspect’s document detailed his militant environmentalism and dislike of Fox News.
The mass shooting was followed by another horrific massacre May 24 inside a Uvalde, Texas, school by an 18-year-old loner. Two teachers and 19 children were killed in that attack.