Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Buffalo resident Jamie Lash was giddy as Buffalo Bills safety Josh Thomas draped his arm around her shoulder and smiled for a picture Wednesday. It was a rare moment of lightness in a week spent mourning the violent deaths of 10 people at the Tops Friendly Market where she used to work.
“It means unity. It means support,” Lash said, adjusting the Bills cap someone else from the team had placed on her head.
“We see the 'Bills Mafia' everywhere supporting us,” said Thomas.
He was one of dozens of players and staff from the Bills, as well as the NHL's Buffalo Sabres and the NLL's Buffalo Bandits to emerge from four tour buses at the scene of Saturday's racist attack, where they laid flowers, dished out food and handed out groceries.
The first stop was a group visit to a memorial at the edge of the store's parking lot, where several players placed flowers in front of cut-outs of doves, each bearing the name of a victim.
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“It’s real, going to the actual site and putting flowers down and seeing the people that were affected,” Bills tight end Dawson Knox said. “I still can’t truly wrap my mind around it, but it definitely hits differently actually being here.”
Many of the Bills players in attendance wore a shirt that said “Choose Love.” As Bills quarterback Josh Allen believes, it should be a motto that should be adopted across the county.
"It's the golden rule, treating those as you'd want to be treated," said Allen on Wednesday. "What happened here, it's disgusting, despicable. There's so many different words you can use and none of them are nice. Again, we're here to brighten people's days and try to help move past this, and share the grief with our community and let them know that we care, and we want to hold that with them."
After spending the past six years in Buffalo, Bills' left tackle Dion Dawkins called Saturday's attack on the community “a sad act.”
“Somebody planned an attack. Did the demographic of this community, said ‘This is where they are at the most, let’s attack there,’ and that’s what they did," he said. “I see it more as a terrorist attack to a background of people.
“In the year that we're in now. I figured people see that your neighbor could be Indian, your neighbor could be Russian, Caucasian, Asian, they could be African. We all live together, we have to make it work. You don’t have to love everybody, but you have to show love in some type of way.”
From behind tables, Allen and other players served hot meals of chicken alfredo with broccoli and handed out lettuce, radishes and other produce to residents.
"This is our community, this is the 'City of Good Neighbors'," said Bills general manager Brandon Beane. "The great thing we talk about, as a locker room, all the time is everyone comes from different backgrounds, different cities, different origins. It's important for us all to support people in need. Nothing's easy when you have like a hurricane or something like that, but this is even harder. You're talking about life and death, and things will never be the same for a lot of these families that have been affected. You just want to find a way to help. You feel helpless, because you don't know what to do, but we thought this was a good start."
“This week has been terrible," said Shervon White, who lives near the store and came early to see the team. "Just seeing the community come together means so much. To see the Bills come here, it kind of lightened the spirit of the area.”
12-year-old Christopher Boyd smiled at the turn his week had taken as he met players from the Bills team he loves.
“When it first happened I kind of felt unsafe in my home a little bit," he said.
“When I’m here today and I see the Bills. I just feel like they are giving back to the community. They are showing love as we show them when they’re playing on the field. It’s just one big happy family, community.”
The Buffalo Bills Foundation said it would donate $200,000 to relief efforts, an amount that will be matched by the NFL Foundation, the team said on Twitter.
“This is about just filling the gap that’s in our world today with love and bringing people together," said Bills head coach Sean McDermott. "When you affect one person in our community, you affect all of us.”
Some of the other notable names in attendance during Wednesday's event:
- Bills: Stefon Diggs, Isaiah McKenzie, Devin Singletary, Kaiir Elam, Tre'Davious White, Tremaine Edmunds, Shaq Lawson, Matt Araiza, Reid Ferguson
- Sabres: Kyle Okposo, Malcolm Subban, Kevyn Adams
- Bandits: Josh Byrne, Dhane Smith, Chris Cloutier, Chase Fraser, Tehoka Nanticoke