Nation World News’s Victor Blackwell died on air Monday as he reported from the scene of the mass shooting that devastated Buffalo, New York over the weekend.
“Listen, I was counting in the car, talking to my producer. I’ve done 15 of these,” the anchor and correspondent said of the shoot. “At least those I could count.”
“And we keep having conversations about this, Democrats will say guns, Republicans will say mental health, and nothing will change. And I’ll probably do another thing this year.”
A white gunman opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo on Saturday, shooting 13 people and killing 10. Most of them were black. Peyton Gendron, 18, is accused of traveling nearly 200 miles into the area with the intention of killing as many black people as possible after researching local demographics, according to officials. Gendron was arrested and has pleaded not guilty.
Gendron reportedly bought a semi-automatic assault rifle legally from a gun shop in New York. As The New York Times reports, a racist online manifesto attributed to Gendron states that he modified the weapon using his father’s drill.
“We’ll have a political conversation later, but is this the way for us to live?” Blackwell asked, concluding his broadcast. “Are we destined to keep doing this, city after city? Have we just resigned that this is what we’re going to be?”
The mass shooting was one of many in the US over the weekend. In California, a man opened fire during a lunch reception at a church in Southern California on Sunday. One person was killed and five were injured in what is being described as a politically motivated attack. Two people were killed and three others were injured in a shooting at a flea market in Houston on Sunday. There was also a series of shootings in North Carolina in which seven people were injured.
