Everything we know about the Buffalo white supremacist shooting

The 18-year-old suspected of killing ten people when he opened fire in a Buffalo supermarket has told police that he set out to target a majority black community, according to an official familiar with the investigation.

The gunman, named as Payton Gendron in court papers, shot 11 black and two white people – three of whom were wounded but survived – during an attack that he broadcast live on the streaming platform Twitch. He “was arrested after a stand-off at the scene”, the BBC reported, having started “firing in the store’s car park before entering and continuing his rampage”.

The attack is believed to be “the worst mass shooting so far in the US in 2022”, and is likely to “further inflame the bitter political battle about gun control in the US”.

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Deadly attack

Gendron drove almost 200 miles from his home in Conklin, New York state, to target Tops Friendly Market, a supermarket in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Buffalo.

The shop’s manager told the New York Daily News that Gendron disguised himself as a homeless person to perform reconnaissance on the store in the days before the deadly attack.

Police said that three people were shot dead in the car park and seven were killed inside the supermarket. A retired police officer, named as Aaron Salter, was working as a security guard at the supermarket and was killed while trying to shoot the suspect.

Three more people, all of whom worked in the supermarket, were wounded in the shooting. All three were taken to hospital but did not sustain life-threatening injuries.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told reporters that Gendron was “heavily armed” and was equipped with “​​tactical gear”. The teenager handed his gun to police following a stand-off during which he “put his rifle to his own neck”, Sky News said.

The weapon used in the attack was “a semi-automatic rifle that he had purchased legally, but then modified illegally”, Reuters reported. Police also found “two other guns – a rifle and a shotgun – in his car”.

Gendron appeared in court on Saturday night charged with first degree murder. He pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.

‘Domestic terrorism’

An official familiar with the investigation described to CNN how Gendron made “disturbing statements describing his motive and state of mind following his arrest”. These comments were characterised as being “clear and filled with hate toward the Black community”.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told reporters that the attack “is the worst nightmare that any community can face and we are hurting, we are seething right now”.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that while “we still need to learn more about the motivation” for the attack, we “don’t need anything else to state a clear moral truth” that “a racially motivated hate crime is abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation”.

“Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America,” the president added. “Hate must have no safe harbour. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism.”

Supremacist manifesto

Police chief Gramaglia yesterday told reporters that Gendron was questioned by police last June when he was detained after making a “generalised” threat at his high school. He said the teenager was given a mental health evaluation, but was released after a day and a half.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul later told ABC News that the investigation would focus on what could have been done to stop the attack, telling the broadcaster: “I want to know what people knew and when they knew it.”

The gunman has since been linked to “an online racist manifesto” that promotes “white supremacy” and the so-called “great replacement theory”. The latter is a belief held in far-right and white supremacist circles that claims “white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of colour”.

The document states that he targeted the Buffalo supermarket because it was in an area with “the largest percentage of black residents near his home”, The Telegraph reported.

The manifesto also included a list of “high-profile enemies”, including London Mayor Sadiq Khan. According to The Times, Gendron wrote that Khan, who recently returned from a visit to the US aimed at boosting tourism links, represents “an open sign of the disenfranchisement and ethnic replacement of the British people in the British isles”.

“This Pakistani Muslim invader now sits as representative for the people of London. Londinium, the very heart of the British isles. What better sign of the white rebirth than the removal of this invader?”

He also listed “President Erdogan of Turkey and the billionaire philanthropist George Soros on his hit list”, The Times added. Soros, a Jewish survivor the Nazi occupation of Hungary, “is a common target for antisemitic hatred and conspiracy theories”.

That the suspect streamed the attack live on Twitch also suggests he took “inspiration” from the 2019 Christchurch massacre, The New York Times said.

The attack on two mosques in New Zealand was carried out by an attacker who also published a manifesto containing “old strains of white supremacy and xenophobia”, the paper added. And it also introduced the “grim new twist” of being “packaged for a live audience online”.