Cop-turned-guard killed in battle with Buffalo shooter

LOCKPORT, N.Y.—After serving as a Buffalo police officer for 30 years, Aaron Salter Jr. spent the last four years working as a security guard at the Tops Friendly Markets store on the city’s east side.

That’s where he was Saturday afternoon when a gunman walked in with a military-style assault rifle in his hands and hatred in his heart and opened fire.

Authorities said Salter acted like the cop he was: He pulled out his gun and tried to shoot the shooter, who police identified as 18-year-old Payton Gendron.

But Gendron was wearing a bulletproof vest and Salter’s bullets couldn’t pierce him. Instead, police say the attacker fought back and killed Salter, whose family was mourning a man city officials considered an undeniable “hero” on a horrific day.

“Today is a shock,” his son, Aaron Salter III, told the Daily Beast in Lockport, a suburb of Buffalo.

“I’m pretty sure he saved some lives today. He’s a hero.

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Salter, who leaves behind three children, joined the Buffalo Police Department right out of high school.

In 1996, he confronted another gunman and cheated death.

“My first reaction was to duck,” he said. Buffalo News after a burglary suspect pointed a 12-gauge shotgun in his face. “I don’t like looking down the barrel of a shotgun, and if my partner hadn’t shot first, this would have been a golden opportunity to shoot us. My partner probably saved us.

Adam Bennefield, a cousin of Salter’s who lives in Buffalo, said the family was extremely shaken by Saturday’s shooting.

“I don’t think anyone could imagine something like this happening,” Bennefield, 44, told the Daily Beast. “I don’t think anyone can do it. Everyone is hurt right now, everyone is upset.

Bennefield said he always had immense respect for his cousin, who had extensive knowledge not only of police work but also “of things outside of being an officer.”

In retirement, Salter pursued his dream of building vehicles powered by green energy and owned a company called AWS Hydrogen Technologies.

“I am still working on my vehicles and/or my project to run engines on water for about four years,” his LinkedIn profile reads. “I would like to one day realize my dream of running cars on water with my new discovered energy source.”

In a 2015 video, Salter gave viewers a tour of his Ford F-150 pickup powered by hydrogen electrolysis, which he said could be started with gasoline and then switched to run on water .

“The guys were making fun of me,” Salter said in an online interview that same year, describing a solar panel he once installed at his home.

Salter’s late mother, Carol, worked as a cashier at a Tops Market in Buffalo for 15 years, then was front-end manager until her own retirement in 1986. She and her late husband, Aaron Salter, Sr. , then opened a dry business. cleaners, which they operated until its closure in 1998.

In a surreal twist, Aaron Salter, III had long worried about an attack like the one that killed his father.

“If I hear another story of someone mass murdering innocent people or like yesterday the 20 year old in Missouri who went to Walmart with an assault rifle and (sic) and 100 rounds of ammunition and s “I’m recorded making comments to people who were shopping, I’m going to lose (sic) my mind,” he wrote on Facebook in August 2019. “(We) can’t even do shopping.” everyday bullshit without having to watch our backs and it’s scary The sad thing is I feel like some crazy person near me is going to do something soon and I’m not! ready for this.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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