Buffalo supermarket shooting: Cashier witnessed 2010 mass shooting that killed brother

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A cashier at the Buffalo supermarket where 10 people were killed Saturday was reliving a nightmarish episode, as she witnessed another mass shooting in western New York that claimed her brother’s life nearly 12 years ago.

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Latisha Rogers is an assistant office manager at Tops, where she has worked for three years, The Buffalo News reported.

“I can’t sleep. I can eat a little bit, but I just keep hearing gunshots and just seeing the bodies,” Rogers told the newspaper.

On Saturday afternoon, Rogers hid behind the customer service counter and called 911 when Payton S. Gendron entered the store and began shooting, according to the newspaper.

When the dispatcher asked her to speak louder, Rogers said she feared for her life.

“Ma’am, he’s still in the store,” Rogers said, according to the News. “He’s shooting. I’m scared for my life. I don’t want him to hear me.”

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It was a tragic reminder of another mass shooting in Buffalo that the woman witnessed. On Aug. 14, 2010, a gunman fatally shot four people execution-style and wounded four others, The Associated Press reported at the time. Some of the victims were at the downtown Buffalo bar as a prelude to a wedding anniversary ceremony.

The shooting, which came to be known as the City Grille Massacre, came after an argument and led to the death of Latisha’s brother, Danyell Mackin, 30, who was visiting Buffalo from Austin, Texas, the AP reported. He was celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife, Tanisha Mackin, who was not injured in the shooting.

Danyell Mackin was a week short of his 31st birthday.

Mackin was shot once by Riccardo McCray, a 23-year-old high school dropout who would be sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for the fatal shootings, according to the AP.

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“An occasion that should have been a joyous one, a happy one, turned tragic,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said at the time.

Witnesses said that after Mackin was lying on the ground trying to get up after being shot, McCray approached him and shot him again in the upper back or net, the News reported in 2010.

“I was there when that happened,” Rogers told the News on Sunday. “And that was a massacre, and now I have to relive a whole other massacre.”

Rogers said she does not believe she can go back to Tops after Saturday’s shooting.

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“I know a lot of the regulars,” Rogers told the News. “I know a lot of residents that come in there. I’ve been here for three years. That store is very important to that community. I didn’t realize how important it was until I started working there. They love that store. That is just a traumatic experience to have in that community like that.”

Information from online newspaper archives was used in compiling this report.

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