Seven families whose loved ones were murdered at the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket on May 14, 2022, as well as three shoppers and three employees injured in the racist attack, announced on Wednesday what their lawyers called a “landmark lawsuit” against social media companies for their roles in the mass shooting.
The complaint names Meta, Reddit, Amazon, Twitch, Alphabet and Snap, among others.
The New York State Supreme Court lawsuit accuses the social media companies of feeding shooter Payton Gendron “a steady stream of racist and white supremacist propaganda and falsehoods.”
“By his own admission, Gendron, a vulnerable teenager, was not racist until he became addicted to social media apps and was lured, unsuspectingly, into a psychological vortex by defective social media applications designed, marketed and pushed out by social media defendants,” according to the lawsuit.
“They didn’t pull the trigger. They helped him load the gun,” said attorney Ben Crump at a press conference at Elim Christian Fellowship.
Suing are the families of Aaron Salter Jr., Margus Morrison Jr., Pearl Young, Geraldine Talley, Ruth Whitfield and Roberta Drury, all of whom were killed.
“It didn’t just end on 5/14. We live this each and every day, each and every moment of the day,” said Kimberly Salter, widow of Aaron Salter Jr. “I stand here still grieving my husband’s loss.”
Her husband, a retired Buffalo police officer providing security at the store, was killed after exchanging gunfire with the assailant.
Salter was hailed as a hero.
“What if it was your family member? What if it was you? But not only that to watch it. To watch it livestreamed,” Kimberly Salter said. “These were people’s lives that were taken that we’re not getting back.”
Also suing are three Tops employees: Brooklyn Hough, Christopher Braden and Zaire Goodman.
The three shoppers suing are Jo-Ann Daniels, Kisha Douglas and…
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