The city of Buffalo is reeling following what officials are calling an "act of violent extemism" Saturday, as 10 people were murdered and three injured at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue.

“People started screaming and running out of the Tops parking lot so we backed up and pulled and parked right across in the Family Dollar parking lot and that’s when I got out and seen all the bodies that were laying in the front," said community activist Dominique Calhoun, who was on her way to the supermarket to pick up ice cream with her children. "People were crying, people were running out, people were trying to see if their loved ones were inside, the officers were pulling up, firetrucks, ambulances, and it was just a horrible situation.”

Some bystanders waited to hear if their friends and family were safe, while others near the scene tried to process the unfathomable event that took place.

“I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m mad, because I never thought it would’ve happened here in the city of Buffalo," said Liz Bosley, Most Valuable Parents recruiter. "I know we have a lot of killing, but I never would’ve thought we would have a massacre killing come up here in Buffalo and shoot up Tops Market on Jefferson Avenue.”

The mass shooting, which investigators are investigating to be a racially-motivated hate crime, left members of the city’s predominately Black East Side devastated.

“This is one of the first and only Black grocery stores in an all-Black community — and my family shops here on Saturday mornings," said Project Mona's House founder Kelly Diane Galloway. "That could’ve been our mothers, our grandmothers, our aunts, our uncles, and it was us; it was us. So you came from outside our community and you did this to us.”

The shooter, a white male, was taken into police custody apparently unharmed, which many community members called into question, citing incidents involving the Buffalo Police Department and people of color that had different outcomes.

“The sad part is, if it had’ve been a Black man shooting up people, he would’ve been dead by now; the shooter is not dead,” said Leslie Thomas, who convinced her mother not to go shopping at the supermarket Saturday.

“It’s messed up, you know what I mean? He got the chance to walk out with handcuffs. At the end of the day, if a Black person did it, we’ll be dead," said Buffalo resident Brandon Garner.

An open wound in the city and entire nation, as a sad reminder that racial tensions are still an issue to be reconciled.

“This is not nothing new. It’s racism here every single day. We deal with it, and it’s all over the world. It’s just that we didn’t expect it to happen here but you know, it happened,” Garner said.

A sobering incident that some hope will motivate lawmakers to work harder at cracking down on gun violence.

“I’m just hoping and praying that this woke up not only the Buffalo Police Department, but all the politicians up in here, the mayor, everyone," Bosley said. "I’m hoping this was a wakeup call.”