Racist shooter ‘pure evil’
White supremacist leaves 10 dead, as second gunman attacks church
Devastated residents from Buffalo held vigils after a white supremacist gunman who officials have branded “pure evil” shot dead 10 people at a grocery store in a horrifying racist rampage.
The police commissioner for the US city in western New York, Joseph Gramaglia, told reporters the 18-year-old suspect did “reconnaissance” on the predominantly black area surrounding Tops Friendly Market and drove there from his home town of Conklin, more than 320km away.
Wearing heavy body armour and wielding an AR-15 assault rifle, the shooter killed 10 people and wounded three others – almost all of them black – before threatening to turn the gun on himself. Police said they talked the gunman down before arresting him.
The suspect, identified as Payton Gendron, was charged on a single count of firstdegree murder and held without bail, the Erie County district attorney’s office said. He pleaded not guilty.
“The evidence that we have uncovered so far makes no mistake that this is an absolute racist hate crime,” Mr Gramaglia said, adding Gendron had a rifle and shotgun in his car.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown was unequivocal about the shooter’s motivations: “This individual came here with the express purpose of taking as many black lives as he possibly could.”
Mr Gramaglia said Gendron just last year made “generalised threats” at his high school, after which state police referred him to a hospital for a mental health evaluation. He was later released.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native, described the shooting as a “military-style execution” and said racist messaging was “spreading like wildfire” online.
Just hours later in California, a shooting at a church southeast of Los Angeles left one person dead and four others “critically wounded” according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Police said an emergency call had come from Geneva Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoon in the town of Laguna Woods, 70km southeast of Los Angeles.
“We have detained one person and have recovered a weapon that may be involved,” the sheriff’s department said, but it did not immediately indicate the motive for the shooting.