Youth Football Game Shooting Leaves Community Shaken In Buffalo

If you ask anyone who lives around Western New York, they will tell you that Buffalo is a football city. From the Bills to the UB Bulls to high school and little league ball, weekends in the 716 are filled with people playing, coaching, or watching football. It's not unusual to see hundreds of people watching their little ones playing youth football at community fields all over Western New York.

Sunday, September 15, 2024, started like any other youth football Sunday, except things didn't end that way at Emerson Park in Buffalo's Emmerson neighborhood.

According to WIVB-TV, shots rang out at a Little League football game around 11:30 in the morning, leaving one man shot twice and an entire community running for their lives.

WIVB-TV, The Buffalo News, and WHAM-TV report a terrible and chaotic scene on Koons Avenue in Buffalo.

Around 11 am, there was a report to the Buffalo Police Department of a man with a gun on Moselle Street in Buffalo, just a few blocks from where the 11U youth football game occurred. When police arrived, they didn't find a man with a gun, but they did discover that a man had forced a woman into a car at gunpoint.

It's alleged that the man with the gun forced the woman to drive him to Emerson Park when he stole a cell phone from a woman and tried to steal another man's jewelry. The BPD's report then says that the suspect's gun went off, leaving a youth football coach with two gunshot wounds to the left foot and right leg.

After the shooting, the suspect is alleged to have gotten back in the stolen car where the first woman was being held and drove off. He later crashed near Goodyear Avenue and Sycamore Street, where police were able to catch up and arrest him after a brief chase.

Police arrested 29-year-old Rashaan Mallory and charged him with multiple crimes, including Attempted Murder in the Second-Degree, Kidnapping in the Second-Degree, Assault in the First-Degree, and more. Mallory is due back in court on Friday, September 20, 2024.

To say the community is shaken is an understatement, social media posts from people who were at this game show a bunch of people who afraid.