A 911 dispatcher in Buffalo has been placed on leave after hanging up on an assistant manager at Tops supermarket as she hid and tried to quietly explain that a gunman was shooting and killing people.
The assistant manager at Tops Friendly Markets, who would only identify herself as “Latisha,” to The Buffalo News, said that she was lying on the floor behind her customer service counter after the gunshots rang out.
“I tried to call 911, and I was whispering because I could hear him close by, and when I whispered on the phone to 911, the dispatcher started yelling at me saying ‘Why are you whispering? You don’t have to whisper.’ “
Flabbergasted, Latisha tried to continue to explain the life-threatening situation.
“And I’m trying to tell her like, ‘Ma’am, he’s in the store. He’s shooting. It’s an active shooter. I’m scared for my life.’ And she said something crazy to me and then she hung up in my face. And I had to call my boyfriend to call 911.”
Stunned and terrified, Latisha had only her customer service counter to shield her from the view of the gunman on a murderous rampage.
“I felt that lady left me to die,” Latisha told the newspaper.
The dispatcher in question has been placed on leave pending the outcome of an investigation, followed by a hearing which will take place on May 30. An official from Erie County has made it clear what his intentions are regarding the dispatcher.
“Termination will be sought,” Peter Anderson, an Erie County executive spokesperson, told The Associated Press.
As the nation is aware by now, the alleged gunman has been identified as 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron, an avowed White supremacist from Conklin, New York. After plotting for several months, Gendron reportedly drove the 200 miles from this small town near the New York-Pennsylvania border to execute Black people. Thirteen people were shot and 10 African Americans were slain in the attack.
Even more tragic is the fact that the Black citizens had fought for decades to get that grocery store built because that side of town was a food desert.
A few things re #Buffalo from a native:
1) Tops on Jefferson was the lone grocery store in what is otherwise a food desert.2) The Black community in Buffalo fought for DECADES to get this store. They won that fight in 2003.
1/?
— Leslie Mac (@LeslieMac) May 15, 2022
