Katherine "Kat" Massey was a civil rights activist who worked tirelessly to improve Buffalo's Black community, her sister, Barbara Massey Mapps, told ABC News. She said her sister was involved in up to 20 community organizations, including serving as the president of her block club. "Kat was just a good person," Mapps told ABC News in a recent interview. "She was just a normal, everyday person that cared about what was going on in her community, she cared about people. She wanted things to be better for everyone."

She described her sister as a "big advocate" for gun control. In one of the last opinion letters she wrote to the Buffalo News, Kat Massey said, "There needs to be extensive federal action/legislation to address all aspect of the issue. Current pursued remedies mainly inspired by mass killings -- mainly universal background checks and banning assault weapons -- essentially exclude the sources of our city's gun problems. Illegal handguns, via out of state gun trafficking are the primary culprits."

"And then to get killed by a gun, that's just a .... the devil came to town," Mapps said. Mapps said her sister never had children of her own, but her many nieces and nephews considered her a second mom. She said her sister, in essence, adopted the children in the Buffalo Public Schools, secretly sending pizzas to classrooms, purchasing books and classroom supplies for children in her family and others in need. "She loved kids in general, but Buffalo city kids, all 34,000, those were her children," Mapps said of her sister, who worked for 40 years for the Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance company.