Alabama native Pearl Young was among 10 people killed Saturday afternoon when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a New York supermarket in what authorities are investigating as a racially motivated hate crime.
Young, a 77-year-old Fayette native with many family members still living in Alabama, is being remembered for her love for God and her family. She was a pillar in the Church of God in Christ and spent her life serving others.
“This man touched the apple of God’s eye,” said Young’s niece, Jacqueline Wright of Tuscaloosa. “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”
“The Bible says, ‘Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord,” Wright said Sunday in an interview with AL.com. “The government and the system can do one thing, but he’s going to deal with God.”
Young, who moved to New York as a young adult and married a pastor there, had gone to lunch Saturday with her sister-in-law, who then dropped her off at Tops, a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, where she wanted to buy a few items that she needed.
The sister-in-law called Young’s adult son, Damon Young, and told him that she had dropped off Young at the store, and that he would need to pick her up.
But when Damon Young arrived at the supermarket a short time later, police and emergency vehicles had flooded the parking lot.
“He didn’t know what was going on,” said Wright, who spoke with her cousin Damon Young. “They told him there was a shooting in the grocery store and he said, ‘I’m here to pick up my mother.”
“They directed him to an area to where they had identification for those who had identification on them,” Wright said. “I wouldn’t believe it myself until I knew it was verified that she was shot in the store. He gave them her birthdate and it matched.”
“If he had walked in there and saw that fool shooting at his mother, he would have took him down,” Wright said. “He would have took him down so fast and it would have been a story about a hero.”
“But that would have been if we lived in a perfect world,” she said.
Police have identified the gunman as Payton Gendron, of Conklin, N.Y. He was wearing camouflage and a helmet camera that was livestreaming the attack on Twitch, which ultimately cut off the feed.
The video shows the gunman driving to the supermarket, talking occasionally and sometimes taking a deep breath. At one point, he takes a swig from a water jug and eventually pulls into the parking lot and says, “Just got to go for it, right?”
He stops in front of the store, grabs his rifle and exits his car. He opened fire immediately, hitting several people outside the store before going inside and continuing to fire the rifle.
He later surrendered to police.
Authorities said among the 10 killed and three wounded, 11 victims were Black and two were white. A “manifesto” circulated widely online seemingly outlines Gedron’s racist, anti-immigrant and antisemitic beliefs.
“I don’t know how we can make sense of it,” Wright said. “I haven’t slept all night.”
Young was the middle child of three sisters. Her older sister, the Rev. Mary V. Craig, lives in Tuscaloosa.
“She loved her family and her sisters,” Wright said.
Young’s older sister is devastated, just like the rest of the family. Her younger sister was to be told of her death after church on Sunday.
“It was a major blow to her but through her faith in God, she’s doing OK,” Wright said. “They were both powerful women in God.”
Young had three adult children – two sons and a daughter – and a host of grandchildren.
For more than 25 years, she headed a food pantry in the city’s Central Park neighborhood. She also had served as a substitute teacher.
“She was a Godly woman who was loved by so many,” Wright said. “She was an amazing and phenomenal and dedicated missionary.”
Young loved to cook and to dance. A video posted by Wright shows Young dancing and praising God at her sister’s birthday party several years ago.
“She was beautiful inside and out,” Wright said. “This was devastating.”
There has been outpouring of grief on social media over Young’s death, describing her as a “beautiful soul” and beloved Sunday School teacher.
“Because of a senseless act of racially motivated violence, I had to give my grandmother the news that her sister passed away today in the shooting in Buffalo, N.Y.,” wrote great nephew, Phillip Craig of Hoover, on Facebook. “Beyond the shock and grief there is a level of anger that comes knowing this didn’t have to happen. Rest in paradise Aunt Pearl, you should still be with us today.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
