Funerals begin for Buffalo massacre victims
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The first of several funerals for 10 Black people massacred at a Buffalo supermarket was held Friday, one day after victims’ families called on the nation to confront the threat of white supremacist violence.
A private funeral service Friday morning for Heyward Patterson, a beloved deacon at a church not far from Tops Friendly
Market in Buffalo’s Black community, was closed to the media at his family’s request.
Patterson, 67, offered an informal taxi service to help people get home from the market with their grocery bags. Pastor Russell Bell of State Tabernacle Church of God in Christ said Patterson had been assisting someone with their groceries when he was shot and killed May 14.
Tirzah Patterson, the deacon’s ex-wife and mother of their 12-year-old son, described Heyward Patterson as a good father.
“He took care of him. Anything he asked for, he got it,” she said in a Thursday news conference with civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and family attorney Ben Crump.
Jaques “Jake” Patterson, the deacon’s son, bared his grief at the news conference, covering his face with his hands as his mother spoke.
“His heart is broken,” Jake’s mother said, adding that her son was having trouble sleeping and eating.
There was also a wake Friday afternoon for Roberta Drury, the youngest of the people slain at the Buffalo market. The 32-year-old had walked to Tops to pick up groceries, said her mother, Dezzelynn McDuffie, with whom Drury had recently returned home to live.
Drury’s funeral service will be Saturday at Assumption Church in Syracuse, 150 miles east of Buffalo. Her family has also requested that the service be closed.