Watch Interview: Buffalo Supermarket Worker Kicked Gunman Out of Store Night Before

“I met him in the meat department area and I asked him if he could leave the store because he can’t be soliciting in the store asking for change, because he’s making customers feel uncomfortable, and asked him ‘can you please leave the store?’ He said ‘OK.’ And I noticed when he was leaving the store, his eyes were wandering, he was wandering,” said Harris Teague.

Harris Teague said the shooter was wearing the exact same clothes on Friday as he was Saturday, when she saw him again.

But her encounters with the shooter don’t end there. Harris Teague says she was inside the store during the shooting. But, she was almost in the parking lot, where the shooting started. Her daughter asked to buy snacks, so they walked back inside the store.

“We went back into the store and right before we went into the store, the first lady who got shot was coming across the parking lot,” said Harris Teague.

Now, Harris Teague is left with many ‘what ifs.’

“I can’t sleep… I can still see with my eyes closed, hearing any loud noise just makes me jump because I can still hear the guns shooting, people screaming, people crying,” she said.

Harris Teague says Tops employees are being offered extra help. She says she’s been able to talk to someone both Monday and Tuesday and plans to go again on Wednesday. She says she has not decided if she will continue to work at the store.

Tops manager says she asked suspect to leave store the night before

Shonnell Harris Teague, an operations manager at Tops, told ABC News she saw the suspect sitting on a bench outside of the store for several hours Friday, the day before the shooting. He had camper bag on his back and was dressed in the same camouflage he wore Saturday, she said. He entered the store that evening and appeared to be bothering customers so she asked him to leave, which he did, Teague said.

The next day she was fleeing out the back door of the store as the gunman shot people in the aisles.

“I see him with his gear on and his gun and how it was all strapped on. … I (saw) all the other bodies on the ground,” she said. “It was just a nightmare.”

Previous threat led to mental health treatment

Gendron had threatened a shooting at Susquehanna Valley High School last year and was sent for mental health treatment, USA TODAY has confirmed.

New York State Police said troopers were called to the school on June 8, 2021, for a report that a 17-year-old student had made threatening statements. Police said the student was taken into custody under a state mental health law and taken to a hospital for evaluation. The police statement did not give the student’s name. Gendron graduated from the school in Conklin, about 10 miles southeast of Binghamton near the New York-Pennsylvania border.

Gramaglia said Gendron had no further contact with law enforcement after the mental health evaluation that put him in a hospital for a day and a half.

“Nobody called in. Nobody called any complaints,” Gramaglia said. The threat was “general” in nature, he said, and not related to race.

Buffalo man charged over threats; DA warns others: ‘I will prosecute you’

The Tops market rampage appears to have prompted a number of threats of violence, and Erie County District Attorney John Flynn wants them to stop.

A Buffalo man has been arrested and charged with issuing terrorist threats after making intimidating calls to two businesses Sunday and referencing the previous day’s shooting at the supermarket, Flynn said at a news conference Monday.

Citing Buffalo police, WIVB.com said Joseph Chowaniec, 52, called Bocce Pizza complaining about a pizza and threatened to “shoot up Bocce’s like the Tops on Jefferson,” prompting the pizzeria to close. Flynn said that 45 minutes later, Chowaniec made a similar threat to a brewery.

If convicted, Chowaniec faces up to seven years in prison. He has a felony hearing scheduled for Friday and remains in custody pending a forensic examination, Flynn said.

“Let this case send a message out there to any tough guy or anyone who wants to be cute out there … or threatening to do any harm or putting something on social media,” Flynn said. “I will find you and I will arrest you and I will prosecute you.”