Shooter planned to kill again if he could, police say

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The white gunman accused of massacring 10 Black people in a racist rampage at a Buffalo supermarket planned to keep killing if he had escaped the scene, the police commissioner said Monday, as the possibility of federal hate crime or domestic terror charges loomed.

The gunman, who had crossed the state to target people at the Tops Friendly Market, had talked about shooting up another store as well, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told CNN.

“He was going to get in his car and continue to drive down Jefferson Avenue and continue doing the same thing,” the commissioner said.

The commissioner’s account was similar to portions of a racist 180-page document, purportedly written by Payton Gendron, that said the assault was intended to terrorize all nonwhite, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country. Federal authorities were working to confirm the document’s authenticity.

Gendron, 18, traveled about 200 miles from his home in Conklin, N.Y., to commit the attack, police said. Authorities said he wielded an AR-15-style rifle, wore body armor and used a helmet camera to live-stream the bloodbath on the internet.

Federal prosecutors said they are contemplating federal hate crime charges in the case.

Former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr., 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. We’re mad. This shouldn’t have happened. We do our best to be good citizens, to be good people. We believe in God. We trust Him. We treat people with decency, and we love even our enemies,” Whitfield said at a news conference with civil rights attorney Ben Crump and others.

“And you expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again — over again, forgive and forget,“he continued.

Whitfield’s mother was killed after making her daily visit to her husband in a nursing home.

The victims also included: Buffalo police Officer Aaron Salter Jr., Celestine Chaney, 65; Roberta A. Drury, 32; Katherine Massey, 72; Margus D. Morrison, 52; Heyward Patterson, 67; Geraldine Talley, 62; and Pearl Young, 77, all of Buffalo; and Andre Mackneil, 53, of Auburn, N.Y.

The wounded included Christopher Braden, 55, of Lackawanna, N.Y.; Zaire Goodman, 20, of Buffalo; and Jennifer Warrington, 50, of Tonawanda, N.Y.

Scott Olson / Getty Images Family members of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, who was killed during a mass shooting at Tops Market, grieve as they listen during a press conference in Buffalo, N.Y.