Two new lawsuits were recently filed by seventeen survivors and family members of the victims of the 2022 Buffalo Tops supermarket mass shooting.
Per ABC news, the lawsuits were filed on Wednesday in the Erie Country State Supreme Court in Buffalo, NY.
With the new cases, legal action is currently being taken against a variety of social media sites such as YouTube and Reddit as well as parent companies Alphabet Inc. and Google. The companies are being sued for their role in using their algorithms to promote extremist content that the killer, Payton Gendron, would watch and read before the shooting.
In response to the new legal action being taken against them, YouTube officials spoke out per a statement, expressing their “deepest sympathies” for the victims and claiming that they’ve worked against promoting such content.
“Through the years, YouTube has invested in technology, teams, and policies to identify and remove extremist content,” said a spokesperson. “We regularly work with law enforcement, other platforms, and civil society to share intelligence and best practices.”
The lawsuits are also being filed against Vintage Firearms, the shop that sold Gendron the weapon he used in the shooting, and company, RMA Armament Inc., for selling him body armor.
Georgian company Mean Arms LLC was also named as a defendant for their role in equipping Gendron with a lock that accepts illegal large-capacity magazines. The final defendants being named in the new lawsuits are Gendron’s parents for their lack of action against the known violent tendencies of their son.
In a press conference, Wayne Jones, the son of victim 65-year-old Celestine Chaney, spoke out while holding a photo that circulated online of his deceased mother lying in the aisles, sharing his hope for justice.
“I can’t get this out of my mind. It goes nowhere,” said Jones per ABC News. “So, maybe if you put yourself in my shoes, maybe we can get something changed.”
The two new lawsuits are not the first lawsuits to be filed as a result of the shooting.
In December of last year, the city of Buffalo took legal action against gun companies such as Bertta, Bushmaster, Glock and Smith & Wesson, citing their irresponsible sales methods and criteria.
The lawsuit was the first to be filed by a city against a large gun company following the passage of a 2021 law that allowed legal action to be taken against them only if their methods had created a “public nuisance.”
Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Letitia James also filed a lawsuit against Mean Arms LLC.
Filed in May, the lawsuit took legal action against the company for its role in deceptively advertising a magazine lock for its sale in New York while making it relatively easy to remove, making the firearm illegal under New York law.
