‘HE NEVER CAME OUT’
One of the people slain in the Buffalo rampage was picking up a birthday cake as a surprise for his son when he was killed, his relatives revealed Monday.
Andre Mackniel, 53, was among the 10 people killed when authorities say Payton Gendron, 18, went on a hatefueled shooting rampage at the Tops Friendly Market on Saturday.
“[Andre] never came out with the cake,” said his cousin Clarissa AlstonMcCutcheon.
She added that such gifts weren’t uncommon for Mackniel.
“Just a loving and caring guy. Loved family. Was always there for his family,” she said.
Tracey Maciulewicz, who identified herself on Facebook as Mackniel’s fiancée, wrote that it was their son’s birthday Saturday.
“Today my baby was born but today my soul mate was taken. How do I tell my son his daddy’s not coming home? How do I as a mother make it ok? Someone please tell me because I really don’t know,” she wrote, according to The Washington Post.
Also killed were Aaron Salter Jr., 55, a longtime store security guard who was shot trying to stop the killer, and a church deacon, Heyward Patterson, 67.
‘Heart of gold’
Patterson, a deacon at the State Tabernacle Church of God in Buffalo, would regularly go to the Tops supermarket to help community members and was there on Saturday to take home a client, his wife, Tirzah, 53, told The Post.
“He was a loving father, and he was a community person, friendly,” she said. “He had a heart of gold. That’s the kind of person he was.”
The couple got married in 2009 after meeting at church, Tirzah said.
Heyward, who was a retired McDonald’s manager, is survived by
two daughters from a previous relationship, as well as a 12-year-old son with Tirzah, she said.
Of the couple’s son, Jaques, Tirzah said: “He’s doing the best he can do. He’s just sad.”
Their daughters are “heartbroken as well,” Tirzah said.
Another victim, Geraldine Talley, 62, was grocery shopping with her fiancé when she was fatally shot, said her niece Lakesha Chapman.
“She’s sweet, sweet, you know, the life of the party,” Chapman told CNN. “She was the person who always put our family reunion together.”
Chapman, who called Talley “Auntie Gerri,” lives in Atlanta but traveled to Buffalo to be with relatives after the mass shooting.
She said Talley’s family didn’t learn she was killed until five hours later. When the gunfire started, Talley was at the front of the store, while her fiancé had gone in to grab orange juice, Chapman said.
“We’re outraged,” Chapman said. “This is not, obviously, the first racially triggered attack in America.
However, it is the first that hits our home.”
Also slain was Margus Morrison, 52, a father of three, the mother of his children told WKBW-TV.
Pamela Pritchett, whose mother, Pearl Young, 77, was also killed in the attack, told The Post on Sunday, “You
don’t expect this when your mother goes grocery shopping.”
Ruth Whitfield, the mother of former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, was also shopping at the market when she was fatally gunned down.