Buffalo shooting suspect exhibited warning signs
Red flags included successful student’s in-class comment
CONKLIN, N.Y. — In the waning days of Payton Gendron’s COVID-19-altered senior year at Susquehanna Valley High School, he logged on to a virtual learning program in economics class that asked: “What do you plan to do when you retire?”
“Murder-suicide,” Gendron typed.
Despite his protests that it was all a joke, the bespectacled 17-year-old who had long been viewed by classmates as a loner with good grades was questioned by state police over the possible threat and then taken into custody and to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation under a state mental health law.
But a day and a half later, he was released. And two weeks after that, he was allowed to participate in graduation festivities, including riding in the senior parade, where he was photographed atop a convertible driven by his father and festooned with balloons and signs reading, “Congratulations” and “Payton Gendron.”
That account of Gendron’s brush with the law last spring, according to authorities and other people familiar with what happened, emphasized the same point school officials made in a message to parents at the time: An investigation found no specific, credible threat against the school or any individual from that sign of trouble.
That same young white man bought a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, traveled three hours to Buffalo and went on what authorities say was a racist, livestreamed shooting rampage Saturday in a crowded supermarket that left 10 Black people dead.
Gendron, now 18, was arraigned on a state murder charge over the weekend and a court-appointed public defender entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf. He remained jailed under suicide watch as federal prosecutors contemplate hate-crime charges.
Even as the FBI swarmed the home where Gendron lived with his parents and two younger brothers, neighbors and classmates in this mostly white community of 5,000 near the New York-Pennsylvania line say they saw no sign of the kind of racist rhetoric seen in a 180-page online diatribe, purportedly written by Gendron. In it, he describes in minute detail how he researched ZIP codes with the highest concentrations of Black people, surveilled the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, and carried out the assault to terrorize all nonwhite, non-Christian people into leaving the country.
Classmates described Gendron as a quiet, studious boy but seemed out of place in recent years, turning to online streaming games, a fascination with guns and ways to grab attention from his peers.
When school partially opened again in 2020 after COVID-19-related shutdowns, Gendron showed up covered head to toe in a hazmat suit. Classmate Matthew Casado said he didn’t think the stunt — he called it “a harmless joke” — went down well with other students.
“Most people didn’t associate with him,” he said. “They didn’t want to be known as friends with a kid who was socially awkward and nerdy.”
Gendron excelled in sciences, once earning top marks in a state chemistry competition. But he was known for keeping to himself and not talking much. And when he did talk, it was about isolation, rejection and desperation.
“He talked about how he didn’t like school because he didn’t have friends. He would say he was lonely,” said Casado, who graduated with Gendron last year.
Casado said that he had never heard his friend talk of anything violent.
“I didn’t think he would hurt a fly,” Casado said of Gendron.
Some neighbors had a similar view, seeing the family as happy and prosperous, with both Paul Gendron and his wife, Pamela, holding stable jobs as civil engineers with the New York state Department of Transportation, according to online records.
Gendron enrolled at Broome County Community College and later dropped out. The school wouldn’t say why. And according to online writings attributed to him, he began planning his assault on the Buffalo supermarket beginning at least in November, saying he was inculcated into his racist views online.
A new, 589-page document of online diary postings emerged Monday that authorities have attributed to Gendron. In it, he describes preparations for the supermarket shooting in detail, writing at one point that he considered attacking a predominantly Black elementary school instead.
He also recounted how he chased down a neighborhood cat, stabbed and decapitated it with a hatchet, took a picture and then buried it in the backyard.