Buffalo shooter researched Christchurch mosque attack

The white 18-year-old who fatally shot 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket extensively researched the Christchurch massacre and based the location of the shooting on local demographics with the intent of killing as many black people as possible, officials said yesterday.

The racially motivated attack came a year after the alleged gunman, Payton Gendron, was taken to a hospital by New York State Police after threatening to carry out a shooting at Susquehanna Valley High School, in Conklin, New York.

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.

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 repeatedly visited sites espousing white supremacist ideologies and race-based conspiracy theories and extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch.

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 and conducted reconnaissance on the store and the area a day before the shooting, police said.