BUFFALO, N.Y. — Vice President Kamala Harris is in Buffalo Saturday for the memorial service of Ruth Whitfield, a victim of the Buffalo mass shooting that left 10 dead. She is joined Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Gov. Kathy Hochul and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
Whitfield, at 86, is the oldest of the 10 people killed. Whitfield is being eulogized by civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton at the service at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Buffalo.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, state Attorney General Leticia James, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, state Senator Tim Kennedy and Congressman Brian Higgins, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes are also in attendance at the service.
Whitfield was inside the Tops Friendly Market after visiting her husband of 68 years in a nursing home May 14 when a gunman identified by police as 18-year-old Payton Gendron opened fire.
Whitfield was the mother of former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield.
The visit comes just over a week after President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden made a stop in Buffalo to meet with the families of the victims.
“The feeling of having that, as I said to some of you when we talked privately, you feel like there’s a black hole in your chest you’re being sucked into, and you’re suffocating, unable to breathe,” Biden said last Tuesday. “That’s what it felt like to us, and I’m sure some version of it feels like that to you. The anger, the pain, the depth of the loss that’s so profound.
