His family said a 20-year-old worker who was injured in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket survived a bullet wound in the neck while he was collecting shopping carts in the parking lot.
Zaire Goodman was among three people injured in what officials say was a “racially motivated” assault by the accused gunman, 18-year-old Peyton Gendron, who faces first-degree murder charges in the deaths of 10 people.
“A few inches to the left or right and he won’t be here,” Goodman’s mother, Janetta Everhart, told Buffalo News. “I know that his life was spared for a reason, and he has to find out what that reason is.”
Everhart, director of diversity and inclusion in the office of State Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, said the suspect shot his son at close range before killing a woman he was helping with a car.
When the gunman moved on, Goodman fled with another employee and called his mother, she said.
Everhart said she was brought to Erie County Medical Center, but miraculously, she didn’t even need stitches. He has since been discharged and is recovering at home.
“He’s in good spirits,” Everhart said of her son, who has autism, and worked at Topps for nearly two years. “He’s a free-spirited kid. It happened to him and now he’s done it.”
He said that after he recovers, he may be ready to return to Villa Maria College and earn a degree in creative writing.
Goodman’s grandfather, Charles Everhart Sr., who attended a Sunday service at True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo, told Buffalo News: “I thank God that my grandson is still here.”
Sources told The News that two other people injured in the violence were Jennifer Warrington, 50, a pharmacist at the top, who was released from hospital on Saturday, and Christopher Braden, who was listed in stable condition. .
