KIN: ‘I BLAME IT ON COVID’
Relatives of the accused gunman in the Buffalo supermarket slaughter are copping a COVID defense, telling The Post on Monday that the teen’s paranoia and isolation from the pandemic likely caused him to snap.
Accused white supremacist Payton Gendron, 18 — who is charged with killing 10 people in a hatefueled rampage at a Tops Friendly Market on Saturday — allegedly posted a manifesto before the attack in which he claimed his “extreme boredom” in the early days of the pandemic had driven him to seek out and be “radicalized” by extremist material online.
“I have no idea how he could have gotten caught up in this. I blame it on COVID,” said Sandra Komoroff, 68, a cousin of Gendron’s mother, Pamela.
“He was very paranoid about getting COVID, extremely paranoid, to the point that, his friends were saying, he would wear the hazmat suit [to school],” she said.
“And then he got COVID just a few weeks ago . . . He went to family functions with a respirator mask on. He totally wasn’t going to get COVID — and then he got COVID.
“They were vaxxed to the max,” Komoroff said of the family. “I don’t know if it was a bad case. I just know he caught it.”
She added that Gendron had “bought into the fear of COVID.”
“That’s the only way to say it. And when you’re home all day on the Internet, you’re missing out on human contact,” Komoroff said. “There’s a lot of emotions and a lot of body language you’re not getting [as] when you see their face.”
Her husband, Dave, 68, added, “In theory, [COVID] could have affected what they call the lizard brain — the part of the brain that controls aggression.
“I can’t say it’s impossible, but maybe that would happen one out of so many millions of times.”
‘Smart enough’
Gendron allegedly espoused racist philosophies in his rambling, 180-page manifesto and outlined plans for the massacre, lawenforcement sources have said.
The Komoroffs denied knowing anything about Gendron’s alleged racist leanings. But, Dave said, “he’s smart enough to get into dangerous stuff online, which maybe the average person wouldn’t know how to get into.”
In June of last year, Gendron was asked as part of a high-school project to share his future plans — and responded that he wanted to commit a murder-suicide, authorities and reports have said.
“My question is — and I don’t know the answer, either — but did they do something?’’ Dave said of the teen’s parents, Pamela and Paul.
“The parents are well-to-do. Did they put him in some kind of therapy? Because when they get the civil lawsuit, that’s what’s going to come out. The parents are both college-educated. They’re intelligent. They’re engineers. They’re not hill people. ‘Did you think he needed any help?’ ”
State Police had responded to that incident by taking Gendron to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, but he was released after a day and a half.