A large crowd of people was at the Delaware Park basketball courts Monday evening when Kenmore resident Joel Northrup, 26, was gunned down in what Buffalo Police are calling a "targeted" killing.
Police say a few witnesses are talking about what happened and lots of videotape is being pulled from surveillance cameras and social media to identify the shooter. A surveillance camera at nearby Parkside Avenue and Jewett Avenue would have caught much of the action and particularly traffic fleeing the scene.
"There were a lot of people there and we certainly know that there were people that witnessed it and left the scene and we continually ask for cooperation from witnesses," said Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia. "We need that community cooperation and our department works very hard on building that trust."
Gramaglia said there may have been a prior incident to the shooting.
"The information that was provided to us yesterday said there was some form of an argument or fight the day before," he said. "We are looking into that. We collected some social media video on that, so we are looking to see if that is related or not. So at this point it's still preliminary."
Mayor Byron Brown told a news conference earlier Tuesday afternoon many people are threatened when a crime like this takes place in a heavily used park.
"Basketball courts are just a few hundred feet away from the Buffalo Zoo, just a few hundred feet away from play equipment for small children that go to the park from every section of our city."
While this has been a violent summer, police said the level of violence has eased sharply in the last month or so.
