Attorney Ben Crump hired to represent family of Buffalo mass shooting victim – Orlando Sentinel
Florida attorney Benjamin Crump has been hired to represent the family of 86-year-old Ruth Elizabeth Whitfield, one of 10 people killed at a grocery store in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York Saturday.
Yesterday, we witnessed the deadliest mass shooting of 2022, perpetrated by a self-proclaimed white supremacist who set out to do one thing: kill Black people, Crump said in a statement released Sunday.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Payton Gendron, traveled to the area with the express purpose of taking as many Black lives as he could.
Officials say Gendron shot 13 people in Saturdays attack. Of the victims, 11 were Black. Gendron also streamed the violent rampage on gaming site Twitch. In the video, an anti-Black racial slur is seen scrawled across the barrel of his gun.
NO question of motive he wrote it on his assault rifle!! Crump wrote on Twitter sharing a screenshot of the weapon pulled from the live stream.
Investigators also found a 180-page manifesto believed to be written by Gendron that detailed the deadly plot, identified Gendron as the shooter and repeated a racist conspiracy theory that details a false belief that immigrants and minorities are plotting to replace white people.
Sharon Doyle gathers with others outside the scene of a shooting at a supermarket, in Buffalo, N.Y., Sunday, May 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) (Matt Rourke/AP)
Though investigators are still working to authenticate the document, they found that Gendron, who is white, had repeatedly visited websites that espoused white supremacist beliefs and had extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter who perpetrated that attack also believed the great replacement theory shared in the manifesto.
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Crump said Whitfield was the primary caretaker for her husband and had stopped by the grocery store on her way home after visiting him in a nursing home when she was killed. The Associated Press reported that Whitfield was the mother of retired Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, who told The Buffalo News she was a mother to the motherless and a blessing to all of us.
Crump is working the case with New York attorneys Terry Connors of Connors LLP and Ken Abbarno of DiCello Levitt.
We are thoroughly investigating the shooting and the events leading up to it, Crump said. These grieving families deserve to know how a white supremacist, so vocal about his hatred, was able to carry out a premeditated and targeted act of terrorism against Black people all while armed with an assault rifle fitted with a high-capacity magazine. Its an all-too-familiar scenario, with the same tragic, but preventable ending. We will get answers for these families, and we will hold those responsible for this tragedy accountable.
Crump, arguably the nations most well-known civil rights attorney, became a household name after he was hired to represent the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old killed by George Zimmerman in a 2012 shooting in a Sanford condo complex.
Since then, he has been a fixture in nearly every nationally-known, anti-black civil rights case, most of them related to police killings of unarmed Black men and women. He also represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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Attorney Ben Crump hired to represent family of Buffalo mass shooting victim - Orlando Sentinel