Surviving family members of the victims of the Tops May 14 massacre have filed a civil lawsuit against the corporations and entities they claim helped enable Payton Gendron to commit the racist attack on 10 members of Buffalo’s East Side community.
The families, as well as some of the individuals injured in the shooting, made the announcement during a press conference Wednesday at Elim Christian Fellowship. They are working with a legal team that is headed by noted civil rights attorney, Benjamin Crump.
“These social media companies knew or should have known that these algorithms will lead people to act in racist, violent manners,” Crump said. “The manufacturers of these body armors should have known that this type of body armor leads to bloody massacres. And the gun sellers knew or should have known that these guns would lead to gut-wrenching murder. Yet they all looked away.”
Crump addresses the media about the lawsuit filed on behalf of the survivors and the families of the victims.
The defendants named in the suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, include the tactical armament companies that manufactured and sold the products Gendron used in the attack, the online media platforms that hosted the streaming footage of the attack, and the websites that allowed for white supremacy ideals to be disseminated online.
“Companies have put profits before people,” said Amy Keller, one of the attorneys representing the families and a partner at DiCello Levitt. “We have detailed in our complaint how social media companies knew there was a problem, how they knew people would get addicted to these platforms, how they knew the platforms had a way of making people feel isolated and alone. And then when those people feel isolated and alone, they fall victim to white supremacy, to tropes, and they fall victim to becoming the next mass shooter.”
Among the other defendants named in the lawsuit are Paul and Pamela Gendron, the parents of the shooter, who provided their son with his own rifle, as well as Amazon, Meta, Google, Reddit, Twitch, Discord, 4Chan and Snap, among others.
The legal representation team hopes that the case can be a trial jury made up of Erie County residents.
Zeneta Everhart discusses the recovery of her son, Zaire Goodman, who was shot in the May 14 attack at Tops.
