Latisha, a Tops employee who survived the tragic mass shooting at the Jefferson Avenue supermarket on Saturday (May 14), claims that a 911 dispatcher hung up on her because she was whispering on the call.
The suspect Payton Gendron reportedly traveled almost 200 miles to a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo dressed in combat uniform to kill as many Black people as he could at one time.
Authorities said the incident, which left 10 people dead and critically injured a further three, was a “racially motivated hate crime.”
Speaking on a voice call with Buffalo news station WGRZ, Latisha said: “I didn’t really see much at all, I just heard the gunshots and just dropped down to the ground and just waited for him to stop.”
Latisha, who was working as an assistant manager at the supermarket at the time of the shooting called 911 to get help, whispering to the dispatcher as she feared the shooter would hear her. “He just wouldn’t stop so I tried to call 911 and I was whispering because I could hear him close by… 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,’” she told the news station.
“And I’m trying to tell her, like, ‘Ma’am he’s in the store, he’s shooting, he’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. I had to call my boyfriend and tell him to call 911,” Latisha added.
Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told ABC News that the suspect was planning to continue his rampage had he not been stopped by police.
“We have uncovered information that if he escaped the supermarket, he had plans to continue his attack,” said Gramaglia. “He had plans to continue driving down Jefferson Ave. to shoot more Black people… possibly go to another store or location.”
Gendron is also suspected of writing a 180-page statement posted online detailing his plan for the massacre.