The retired Buffalo police officer fired multiple times at the attacker, striking his armor-plated vest at least once.

“He’s a true hero,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Sunday.

Ruth Whitfield was the 86-year-old mother of retired Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield.

She had just visited her husband at a nursing home, as she did every day, when she stopped at Tops to buy a few groceries and was killed, her son told The Buffalo News.

I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her,” Garnell Whitfield said.

Roberta Drury had recently returned home to live with her mother, Dezzelynn McDuffie, who told The Buffalo News that the 32 year old had walked to Tops to pick up some groceries Saturday afternoon.

Patterson was loading an elderly woman’s groceries into his car when he was killed, friend Tony Sanders told The Buffalo News.

Tim Kennedy told a church service on Sunday