. It’s a different sort of hard when it’s a place of business, especially one as central to a community as Tops is to east Buffalo., Colorado, after a mass shooter killed 12 people there in 2012. That was one theater in a 16-screen suburban cineplex.
On the other hand, polishing store fixtures and floors is a far cry from addressing the systemic inequality and unhealed trauma in east Buffalo’s Black community, several residents said. On Friday morning, store associates handed single carnations to customers as they entered the newly reopening store. Some also received Tops gift cards — the store planned to hand out more than 200 of them, a representative confirmed.
Fragrance Harris Stanfield, a customer relations employee of Tops, returned to the store Thursday for the first time since the shooting. She initially struggled to get past the foyer, just inside the entrance. Near the store’s entrance, signs labeled “community counseling” hung from pitched tents. On Thursday, residents looked on from behind the fence, some of them angrily, as Tops managers hosted the press event.
Robert Neimeyer, director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, said reopening a site of a mass atrocity can be like walking a tightrope. The Buffalo market, in particular, isn’t just a typical business, he said.
I'm reading that local people want it to open so they can get groceries. Activists say it's too soon.
I myself could not go back because I would have the images of what happened in my mind even though they did redo the store the images of what happened that day will still be in there minds.😔
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