Buffalo police broke up a raucous and chaotic party of several hundred youths about an hour before the shootings that killed a 14-year-old girl and left five teenage boys wounded late Saturday.
A 10:21 p.m. emergency call for loud music and a large number of juveniles smoking outside escalated into another call about 10 minutes later for a report of a fight in or near a parking lot along Alexander Place near East Ferry Street, outside of an apartment complex for seniors, Chief of Detectives Craig Macy said.
Police responded to break up the crowd and stayed at the scene for about 30 minutes, Macy said at a news conference at Buffalo Police Headquarters on Sunday afternoon. The earlier fight is believed to be the impetus for the shooting, he said.
The call for shots fired happened around 11:10 p.m., followed by a report a few minutes later of person shot, he said.
Saturday’s shooting occurred just four blocks away from the Tops supermarket where a white supremacist killed 10 people and wounded three others in a racist attack in 2022.
“It has been a tragic day in the City of Buffalo,” said Mayor Byron Brown, who urged anyone who has video of the gathering or the shooting to contact police. “No parents should have to deal with what these parents are dealing with now.”
Residents in the area said they heard as many as 20 gunshots. Macy would not comment on how many shots were fired, but he said detectives found multiple shell casings at the scene. Police believe at least three handguns were at the scene of the shooting, said Macy.
Deborah Quarles said shots came from a dark-colored car parked on Alexander Place near Elsie Place, although police declined to specify if the shooter or shooters fired from inside a vehicle.
“The car sat there for a second. Next thing you know, it was pow, pow, pow,” said Quarles, who watched from the window of a second-floor apartment nearby.
A Buffalo native, Quarles said she now lives in Atlanta and was in town visiting family.
Quarles said police used pepper spray in breaking up the large group of kids and left about 25 youths still hanging around.
“I called back to the police and said, ‘Why are these kids here?’ and then 50 more came, so now it’s up to 75, then the car pulled up and started shooting, then the kids dispersed, then the police showed up,” said Quarles.
Police declined to release the names of the victims. The girl was taken by ambulance to Oishei Children’s Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to Buffalo Police spokesman Michael DeGeorge. A 15-year-old boy was listed in critical condition at Erie County Medical Center; three other boys, two of them 15 and the third 16, were taken by ambulance to ECMC and were listed in stable condition. A 16-year-old boy was grazed by gunfire and declined medical treatment at the scene, police said.
Some of the victims attended Buffalo Public Schools; the girl was a student at a local charter school, Brown said.
“It’s getting ridiculous. I hear pop, pop, pop, and that sounded too close,” said Anita Tate, who lives in the Bellamy Commons apartments near where the shots were fired.
The aftermath of the shooting was still evident Sunday afternoon. An intubation tube and mask and multiple pairs of medical gloves lay under a tree on Alexander Place, where two area residents said paramedics tended to the girl who was shot.
Tate and other residents said the gathering spilled into the street from a nearby house party, which police confirmed.
One resident of the senior housing complex said he called police three times on Saturday night urging them to arrive quickly because he was concerned that “something is about to happen.”
Kids were running around “out of their mind,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “The response time was too slow.”
On Brown’s weekly talk show on WUFO radio, Macy said that after dispersing the crowd of youths, police stayed at the scene for about 30 minutes and left when “everything seemed relatively peaceful.” Police responded again within minutes of the shots fired call, he said.
Some residents said a house on Alexander Place has been a spot for large, noisy gatherings of young people before.
“There’s no supervision, no guidance by the parents of these kids now,” said Tate.
Macy said the area where the shooting occurred wasn’t “a problem spot.”
“This is not a spot where we typically see gun violence or where we have seen gun violence,” he said.
Nonetheless, Brown said police will increase their patrol presence in the neighborhood.
“The Buffalo Police are not going to rest on this. We are going to work as hard as we possibly can until we find the person or persons responsible for this,” he said.
The mayor also urged the shooter or shooters to consider turning themselves into police.
“If you have any conscience or any remorse that you killed a 14-year-old girl, you should contact the Buffalo Police and turn yourself in,” he said. “This is a senseless crime. To open fire on a group of children absolutely makes no sense whatsoever.”
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