Online diary shows suspect plotted attack for months
The white gunman accused of massacring 10 black people at a Buffalo supermarket wrote as far back as November about staging a livestreamed attack on African Americans, practiced shooting from his car and travelled hours from his home in March to scout out the store, according to detailed diary entries he appears to have posted online.
The author of the diary posted hand-drawn maps of the grocery store with tallies of the number of black people he counted there, and recounted how a black security guard confronted him that day to ask what he was up to. A black security guard was among the dead in Sunday’s shooting rampage.
The diary taken from the chat platform Discord came to light two days after 18-year-old Payton Gendron allegedly opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle at the Tops Friendly Market. He was wearing body armour and used a helmet camera to livestream the bloodbath on the internet, authorities said.
He surrendered inside the supermarket and was charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty and was in custody under a suicide watch. Federal authorities are contemplating bringing hate-crime charges.
Copies of the online materials were shared with AP by Marc-Andre´ Argentino, of the London-based International Centre for the Study of
Radicalisation and Political Violence.
A transcript of the diary entries was apparently posted publicly sometime ahead of the attack. It was not clear how many people might have seen the entries. Experts said it was possible but unlikely the diary could have been altered by someone other than the author.
The FBI’s top agent in Buffalo, Stephen Belongia, indicated on a call with other officials yesterday that investigators are looking at Gendron’s Discord activity, citing posts last year about body armour and guns and others last month in which he taunted federal authorities. In an April 17 post apparently by Gendron, he exhorted readers to kill agents from the FBI and
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield jnr, who lost his 86-year-old mother, Ruth Whitfield, in the shooting, asked how the country could allow its history of racist killings to repeat itself.
“We’re not just hurting. We’re angry,” Whitfield said. “We treat people with decency, and we love even our enemies. And you expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again — over again, forgive and forget. While people we elect and trust in offices around this country do their best not to protect us, not to consider us equal.”
The victims also included a man buying a cake for his grandson; and a church deacon helping people get home with their groceries.
The online diary details a March 8 reconnaissance visit the writer made to Buffalo, about 320km from Gendron’s home in Conklin, New York. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said there was information indicating Gendron was in Buffalo in March.
He said numerous investigators are working on obtaining and reviewing Gendron’s online postings. “There’s a lot of social that’s being looked at, or that’s being verified, captured. Some of that takes warrants that have to be served on various social media platforms.”