Garth Brooks Postpones Ticket Sales for Buffalo Concert Due to Mass Shooting
Garth Brooks has postponed the on sale date for an upcoming show in Buffalo, N.Y., out of respect for a tragedy the city sustained over the weekend. On Saturday (May 14), a racially motivated mass shooting in a supermarket claimed the lives of 10 people and injured three more.
Tickets for Brooks' upcoming Stadium Tour show in the city were scheduled to go on sale this Friday (May 20), but in light of recent events, the singer says he'll push his on-sale date to a later time to be announced in the coming weeks. The show itself will still take place as planned later this summer.
"At some point, the healing in Buffalo will begin and the city will sing again," Brooks says in a statement, "But for now, we pause out of respect for what the great community of Buffalo is going through, and we stand beside all of those who are hurting and confused by such an unthinkable act."
The shooting happened Saturday afternoon in a Tops Friendly Market grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo. The shooter was armed with a rifle and wore body armor and a military grade helmet, attached to which was a head-mounted camera that he used to livestream the massacre on the streaming platform Twitch. Following the attack, an 18-year-old suspect named Payton S. Gendron was taken into custody; CNN reports that he told authorities he was targeting the Black community and made "disturbing statements" regarding his motives. 11 of the 13 victims of the shooting were Black.
"The evidence that we have uncovered so far makes no mistake that this is an absolute racist hate crime. It will be prosecuted as a hate crime," said Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia in a statement on Sunday (May 15). "This is someone who has hate in their heart, soul and mind."
Gendron was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder. Investigators are currently going through an online manifesto allegedly written by the suspect, in which he describes his perception of the dwindling numbers of the white population and identifies himself as a white supremacist, fascist and anti-Semite.
Though Brooks is postponing his on sale date out of respect for the horrific tragedy that occurred in the city over the weekend, his Buffalo show is still expected to take place as scheduled on July 23 at the city's Highmark Stadium.