BUFFALO, N.Y. — When Canisius head basketball coach Reggie Witherspoon says Saturday’s mass shooting hits close to home, he means it.
For Witherspoon it hit closer than most.
“It is a neighborhood that I lived in until third grade,” Witherspoon said.
“Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo is kind of a spot that. Everybody knows someone that’s connected to Jefferson Avenue.”
Add to that the fact the Canisius College campus is seven-tenths of a mile from the Tops Market where 10 people were senselessly killed and three others injured in the worst shooting in Buffalo’s history last Saturday. The shooting is classified as a race-based hate crime.
“This one is shocking and it’s sad, and it’s home. It’s so many people that are separated by one degree from me … or other people.”
“It feels like you’ve been invaded. It’s a helpless feeling.”
Witherspoon has coached college basketball for close to a quarter century. He’s learned how to communicate with student athletes. He says he has a clear message for his current players.
“My message to them is really to be alert, and to try to be as aware and alert and awake as you can be about what’s around you … and what you’re hearing … and what that means.”
He says part of his frustration and anger has to do with the fact that based on some of the information that’s come out about the alleged shooter’s background, this could have been, it would seem, preventable. He says that’s based on the fact that the 18-year-old from Broome County, near Binghamton, has passed a mental health evaluation by New York State police after threatening a school shooting the past year.
“There’s a level of anger that starts to rise in you that you just have a hard time getting away from. That this kid could be out there for as long as he was, seen as being dangerous up to a year ago. Travel from the distance that he traveled from … and literally went to people who had no ability to defend themselves, and do what he did,” Witherspoon said.
Amid senseless circumstances, Witherspoon says he sees one way to a solution.
“We are a people of great resolve. We won’t be represented in a way of weakness … and that’s even if the person didn’t come from four hours away. In this particular case, this person was not one of us … and so my call for everybody is to make sure that his way of thinking does not infiltrate anybody, particularly our young people.
That we become even more vigilant about recognizing this way of thinking at its root, that we kill that way of thinking, and the only thing we hate is hate.”