Mayor: Buffalo mass shooter targeted black neighbourhood
The white 18-year-old who fatally shot 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket researched the local demographics and arrived a day in advance to conduct reconnaissance with the intent of killing as many black people as possible, officials said yesterday.
The racially motivated attack came a year after the gunman was taken to a hospital by state police after making threats involving his high school, according to authorities.
He wasn’t charged with a crime and was out of the hospital within a day and a half, police said, but the revelation raised questions about his access to weapons and whether he could have been under closer supervision by law enforcement.
The Buffalo attack prompted grief and anger in the predominantly black neighbourhood around Tops Friendly Market. A group of people gathered there to lead chants of “black lives matter” and mourn victims that included an 86-year-old woman who had just visited her husband in a nursing home and a supermarket security guard, both of whom were black.
“Somebody filled his heart so full of hate that he would destroy and devastate our community,” the Reverend Denise Walden-Glenn said.
New details emerged yesterday about the gunman’s past and Sunday’s rampage, which the shooter livestreamed on Twitch. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native, demanded technology companies tell her whether they’ve done “everything humanly possible” to make sure they’re monitoring violent content as soon as it appears.
“If not, then I’m going to hold you responsible,” she said.
Twitch said in a statement that it ended the transmission “less than two minutes after the violence started”.
New York State Police said troopers were called early last June to the high school then attended by the alleged gunman, Payton Gendron, for a report that a 17-year-old student had made threatening statements.
Gendron threatened to carry out a shooting at Susquehanna Valley High School, in Conklin, New York, about the time of graduation, a law enforcement official said. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Gendron had no further contact with law enforcement after his release from the hospital.
Federal law bars people from owning a gun if a judge has determined they have a “mental defect” or they have been forced into a mental institution — but an evaluation alone would not trigger the prohibition.
Federal authorities were still working to confirm the authenticity of a racist 180-page document, purportedly written by Gendron, that detailed his plans for the attack and reasons for carrying it out.
A preliminary investigation found Gendron had repeatedly visited sites espousing white supremacist ideologies and race-based conspiracy theories and extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, the law enforcement official said.
Authorities said he shot, in total, 11 black people and two white people.
“This individual came here with the express purpose of taking as many black lives as he possibly could,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said at a news conference yesterday.
The lengthy statement attributed to Gendron outlined a racist ideology rooted in a belief that the United States should belong only to white people. All others, the document said, were “replacers” who should be eliminated by force or terror.
The document said Gendron researched demographics to select his target, and picked a neighbourhood in Buffalo because it had a high ratio of black residents.
Gendron travelled 320km from his home in Conklin, New York, to Buffalo to commit the attack, police said. He conducted reconnaissance on the store and the area a day before the shooting, Gramaglia said.
Gendron surrendered to police who confronted him and convinced him to drop the rifle he had put to his neck. He was arraigned later on Sunday on a murder charge.