Andre Mackneil was at Tops shopping for his young son's birthday party when he was gunned down in the rampage, his family said. "He went to that store to pick up a cake for my little brother because May 14 was my little brother's birthday. And he turned 3 years old and he didn't get to celebrate his birthday with his dad because he never came back," Mackneil's daughter, Deja Brown, said while giving a victim impact statement at the killer's sentencing hearing in February. She called her father "my best friend, who was snatched from this world because of something he couldn't change -- the color of his skin."

Brown said that even though they had been separated at one point in their lives, they later became "inseparable." "I called him for literally everything, especially when I wasn't getting my way because I knew he would make a way," Brown said at Gendron's sentencing. "But most of all, I would be lost without him because I finally found somebody who understood me to a T. We thought a lot alike. And even though he had to be dad before friend, I always respected everything he said. He was so wise and he made the world easier to live in because he had all the answers to my wild questions."

She said she always wanted to be around her father, and tagged along on nearly his every move. "And the one time he leaves without me, he doesn't come back," she said. "After this happened, I constantly beat myself up about him going and I'm still pissed off because he wasn't given a chance to fight. He was blindsided."