The White terrorist who allegedly shot and killed at least 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo left a manifesto that made it explicitly clear that this mass shooting was racially motivated.
The gunman was identified during his arraignment as Payton S. Gendron from Conklin, New York, a 230-mile drive east of Buffalo where the bloodshed took place. Eleven of the 13 people reportedly shot inside and outside of the store were African American, CNN reports. Three of the shooting victims were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The U.S. Department of Justice, which has taken over the investigation and subsequent prosecution of Gendron, said the manifesto proves the alleged shooter took months to plot the execution of innocent Black men and women in the name of White supremacy. Gendron specifically targeted Tops Friendly Market on the city’s east side because of its high density of African Americans.
“There are certain pieces of evidence that we have ascertained in the course of this investigation that indicate some racial animosity,” Erie County District Attorney John Flynn told the New York Times. “I’m not going specifically talk about or elaborate on what exactly they are right now.”
Gendron planned the attack down to the most minute details, including the pathway into the store and the exits, investigators told the media during the press conference. Gendron also reportedly live-streamed the shooting on Twitch and had the N-word stenciled on the assault rifle he used in the killings. He was actually shot in the chest region by an armed security guard, but Gendron was unharmed because he was wearing tactical body armor. The security guard, identified as retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter, was killed in the exchange of gunfire. Salter is being hailed as a hero.
“This was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said of Gendron. “A straight-up racially motivated hate crime.”
Gendron has been charged with first-degree murder when he appeared in a Buffalo court on Saturday evening, May 14, 2022. He reportedly had already planned to plead guilty if he survived the shooting.
Alexander Rosemberg, deputy regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that tracks hate crimes, confirmed Gendron’s alleged mass crime was motivated by the fear that minorities and Jews were steadily encroaching on Whites’ statistical supremacy in terms of population in America.
“Greatly anti-Semitic, greatly racist against people of color, white supremacist, radicalized in all the ways we can think of,” Rosemberg told News 4. “180 pages, I want to repeat, of this.”
