The man accused of killing 10 people in a racist shooting in Buffalo allegedly describes himself as a White supremacist in a document

Celestine Chaney, 65, a grandmother to six children, was one of the most loving and caring people with a genuine spirit and above all, a fighter, her grandson, Wayne Jones Jr., told CNN.

Jones, 27, had planned to surprise his grandmother Sunday with flowers, perfume, a meal and some quality time together since he had to work on Mother’s Day.

Chaney beat breast cancer a few years ago and battled brain tumors when Jones was younger, he said, adding that she always fought her way through her health complications.

“The whole family is devastated,” he said. “And it’s just a shock … you never expect something like this to happen to you … you just pray for everybody else with the trauma that they went through and now you’re living in it.”

Jones said his grandmother played a pivotal role in his and his siblings’ upbringing.

There was “never a dull moment” when she was around, he said, adding that she was always laughing.

“Your world is just shaken up,” Jones said, “And it’s just hard to get back to reality because the reality of it is my grandmother just passed and others lost their lives over nonsense, over nothing, basically because of the color of their skin.”

In the wake of Saturday’s mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, Big Tech platforms are struggling to stop the spread of a video of the attack filmed by the suspect and a document allegedly also produced by him where he outlines his beliefs. 

Platforms have tried to improve how they respond to the sharing of this kind of content since the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, which was also streamed live online.In the 24 hours after that attack, Facebook said it removed 1.5 million copies of the video.

Part of the challenge facing platforms now is what appears to be users posting a deluge of copies of the Buffalo video and document. 

The attack was streamed live on Twitch, a video streaming service owned by Amazon that is particularly popular with gamers. Twitch said it removed the video two minutes after the violence started, but the video had already been downloaded by other users. 

The video has since been shared across major social media platforms and also posted to more obscure video hosting sites. 

Spokespersons for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit all told CNN that they had banned the sharing of the video on their sites and are working to identify and remove copies of it. But the companies appear to be struggling to contain the spread. 

CNN observed a link to a copy of the video circulating on Facebook on Sunday night. Facebook included a warning that the link violated its community standards but still allowed users to click through and watch the video. 

The Washington Post reported a link to another copy of the video had been shared 46,000 times on Facebook before it was removed. 

That video was hosted on a less well-known video service called Streamable and was only removed after it had reportedly been viewed more than 3 million times.  

A spokesperson for Streamable told CNN the company was “working diligently” to remove copies of the video “expeditiously.” The spokesperson did not respond when asked how one video had reached millions of views before it was removed.  

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, on Saturday designated the event as a “terrorist attack,” which triggered the company’s internal teams to identify and remove the account of the suspect, as well as to begin removing copies of the video and document and links to them on other sites, according to a company spokesperson. 

The company added the video and document to an internal database that helps automatically detect and remove copies if they are reuploaded. Meta has also banned content that praises or supports the attacker, the spokesperson said. 

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said it was fortunate that retired police lieutenant and shooting victim, Aaron Salter, was in Tops Friendly Market during the shooting.

The mayor said he believes Salter’s encounter with the suspect slowed him down and reduced the loss of life.

He also credits the rapid response from Buffalo Police to the scene.

“Many more people would probably have been killed and injured if the Buffalo Police did not get to the scene as quickly. They were able to subdue the gunman, they were able to take him into custody without incident, and protect the surrounding neighborhood,” Brown said.

More on the shooting: The man accused of killing 10 people in a racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket Saturday had plans to continue his shooting rampage and kill more Black people, authorities said Monday.

The revelations align with information written in an 180-page racist document authorities have attributed to the suspect, an 18-year-old White man who traveled nearly 200 miles to a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood to unleash an attack.

Eleven of the 13 people shot were Black, officials said, and the massacre is being investigated as a hate crime.

CNN’s Travis Caldwell and Victor Blackwell contributed reporting to this post.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told CNN that he spoke to FBI Director Christopher Wray about the investigation into Saturday’s mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market.

He said Wray vowed that “every resource available to the FBI would be brought to bear on this situation — this horrific shooting in Buffalo, New York — to get to the bottom of what this person did, why they did it, where they came from, how they got the weapons that they got.”

The mayor said it is “absolutely incredible” that “someone with so much hate in their heart, so much hate in their head, traveled from more than three hours to get to this community, a community densely populated with African American residents with the express purpose of trying to take as many Black lives as possible.” 

“That kind of indoctrination is a frightening thing,” Brown added. “To know there are people like that in our country whose hearts are so full of hate, so cold that they would do this to fellow human beings, fellow Americans, it is just absolutely incredible.”

Margus Morrison, 52, went to Tops Friendly Market to buy snacks for a weekly movie night he had with his wife when he was fatally shot there on Saturday, according to his stepdaughter Sandra Demps.

Demps described Morrison as a “hero” to the family who took on a lot of responsibilities and helped provide for her mother who is disabled.

Morrison had worked as a school bus aide in the Buffalo area for the past three years, Demps said.

“He worked with kids. Kids loved him on the bus. He loved the kids. It’s a very big loss to the community,” she told CNN.

Demps said Morrison also enjoyed music, collecting sneakers and will be remembered for his love, kindness and humor.

Morrison is survived by his wife, three children and stepdaughter.

Roberta Drury, 32, was shopping for groceries at the Tops Friendly Markets when she was killed Saturday at the store, her brother Christopher Moyer told CNN.

Drury moved to Buffalo around eight years ago and dedicated her time to helping her brother with his leukemia treatment and assisting her family with running their restaurant, The Dalmatia Hotel, Moyer told CNN.

Moyer remembers his sister as a very happy person who had a good heart, enjoyed going to events with her family and always wanted to do the right thing. 

Moyer first realized something was wrong when Drury’s friends expressed their concern for his sister after she failed to return from the supermarket.

“Her friend was concerned because she went to the store and didn’t come back. At first I saw the news report and I thought maybe she just hung around the area to see what was going on but after a while I knew something was wrong,” he said.

Geraldine Talley, 62, was doing her regular grocery shopping with her fiancé on Saturday when she was shot and killed at the Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, New York, her niece Lakesha Chapman told CNN.

Chapman called Talley her “Auntie Gerri” and said she was an amazing woman. She said Talley was her dad’s baby sister.

“She’s sweet, sweet, you know, the life of the party,” Chapman said. “She was the person who always put our family reunion together, she was an avid baker … mother of two beautiful children.”

“She was just a lover. I mean she didn’t meet a stranger and that’s why this hurts so much,” Chapman said.

Chapman lives in Atlanta and had just arrived in Buffalo to be with family on Sunday when she talked to CNN by telephone.

She said Talley was at the front of the store when the shooting started and her fiancé had gone to get orange juice, so he was able to escape unharmed.

Chapman said it was about five hours before her family found out she had been killed.

She said it was “the most numbing, numbing feeling ever.”

Heyward Patterson, 67, was a taxi driver and was waiting outside of the Tops Friendly Markets store for passengers when he was gunned down in the parking lot, according to the victim’s nephew Terrell Clark.

Clark told CNN his uncle was known as the neighborhood taxi and would offer a ride to anyone who needed a ride. 

Clark remembers his uncle as a very happy man who always had a smile on his face, told jokes, enjoyed singing at his church and “dressed to impress.”

Clark said he messaged and called his uncle when he heard of the shooting but knew something was wrong when he didn’t receive a response. 

Patterson is survived by three children, Clark told CNN.

The Buffalo shooting suspect was visited last year by New York State Police after he turned in a high school project about murder-suicides, Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said.

A judge on Saturday ordered the suspect to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Speaking to CNN’s Victor Blackwell on Monday, Garcia said, “Obviously somebody that commits a crime so horrific — 10 people dead, three others injured — and with his manifesto, with his hatred, his hatred at the age of 18 towards Black people.” 

Garcia said the suspect’s alleged mental health issues “were brought to light” last year when he did a high school post-graduation project about murder-suicide. 

“The state police arrived at his house at that point last year,” Garcia said. “He stayed at a facility, I’m not sure if it was a hospital or a mental health facility, for a day and a half.” 

“Where were the red flags for him to be able to purchase these guns legally?” Garcia asked. “But in a case like this, the gun dealer was able to sell these weapons to this individual because there was no red flags that came up.”