Loss is nothing new to Wayne Jones.
As a Black man in America, specifically Buffalo, New York, he’s known many people who have died because of gun violence. This time, it hit him a little bit closer, however, because it was his mother. Celestine Chaney, 65, was a breast cancer survivor who stopped by Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue on May 14 , 2022, to get strawberries to make a cake.
What happened next was the next tragedy in American history, as 18-year-old Payton Gendron drove up three hours to the store to shoot 13 people, 11 of whom were Black, and killed 10 people, including Chaney. Jones and his cousin Richard Green spoke to rolling out about what happened that day.
What was your first reaction when you heard the news on May 14?
Jones: I was at home, and they called me because they couldn’t find my mom. So I came down to see what was going on, and I stayed for about an hour. They were evacuating the building, everybody was still alive.
She never came out.
So I said, “Let me just go home. Maybe she’s at the hospital. Maybe they took my mom aside.” After that, I was sitting at home, and then my daughter Kayla texted me, “Hey. Someone just sent me a picture. I don’t know if that’s what grandma’s got on.” She’s hysterical, and I was just like “Well, send me the picture so I can see what you see.”
As soon as I open[ed] up the picture, that was my mom lying on the ground on her back with the barrel of a gun over her. So I’m like, “man.” At that point, we knew.
Then, a little bit later that day, somebody sent me the video. That’s when I saw he shot her twice. He shot her the first time, she was lying on the ground, moving around, still alive, he put another clip in and came back around.
How do you feel about this era of social media with so many of these killings being recorded, livestreamed and posted?
This is my issue with social media. If you show a boob, it could taken down instantly, but somebody getting murdered, it just goes on from page to page to page. I mean, they can take down a boob quicker than anything, but I don’t know. This ain’t the first shooting I’ve seen on the internet. We see a lot of shootings on the internet, and the whole videos of it. It’s just sad, that they’re getting the hits. The hits are what people are looking for, the likes. So if people stopped liking [it], [maybe that would make a difference].
Watch the full interview with Jones and Green below.
