Retired cop who fired on store shooter ‘saved lives’

A retired police officer who died trying to stop a racist mass murderer in Buffalo was hailed as a hero Sunday — and, in a sad twist, his son had worried a few years earlier that a mass shooter would hit “close to home.”

Aaron Salter Jr. (photo) fired his weapon at the 18-year-old white supremacist in body armor who stormed into Tops Friendly Market, but the hate-filled teenager killed Salter and nine others Saturday afternoon. Three additional victims were wounded but survived.

“Today is a shock,” his son, Aaron Salter III, said in an interview with the Daily Beast. “I’m pretty sure he saved some lives today. He’s a hero.”

Almost three years ago, Salter’s son talked about his fear of mass shootings on Facebook.

“The sad thing is I feel like a crazy close to home is gonna do something soon and I’m not ready for that,” Salter wrote in an August 2019 post. “We as people of the so called USA need to do better this s—- is nuts! Now wonder why other countries are issuing bans about coming to the US s—- is crazy!”

The shooter, identified by cops as Payton Gendron, lived three-and-a-half hours away and targeted the area of Buffalo he struck because it “has the highest Black percentage that is close enough to where I live,” according to his sickening online manifesto. Eleven of the 13 people he shot were Black.

Salter joined the Buffalo Police Department right out of high school, The Daily Beast reported.

In 1996, he survived an encounter with a shotgun-wielding burglary suspect. The suspect emerged from behind a door and pointed his weapon at Salter’s face but the cop’s partner fired first, according to the Buffalo News. Though his partner missed, the gunman surrendered instead of returning fire.

“My first reaction was to duck,” Salter told the Buffalo News at the time. “I don’t enjoy looking down the barrel of a shotgun, and if it hadn’t been for my partner shooting first, it would have been a golden opportunity to shoot us. My partner probably saved us.”

Salter was also an inventor who wanted to build vehicles that ran on green energy. In a series of YouTube videos he showed off a hydrogen fuel system he built for his Ford F-150 pickup truck.

“I had the pleasure of knowing him,” Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Evans told WIBV 4. “Great guy, well respected, well liked. This is just horrific. It’s tragic. I don’t know what other words to describe it.”