BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The first of several funerals for 10 Black people massacred at a Buffalo supermarket was planned for Friday, one day after victims’ families called on the nation to confront the threat of white supremacist violence.
A private service was scheduled Friday morning for Heyward Patterson, who was a beloved deacon at a church not far from Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo’s Black community. The family requested that the funeral service be closed to the press.
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 on Saturday.
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 press conference with civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and family attorney Ben Crump.