Buffalo Shooter Payton Gendron Charged with Hate Crimes, Faces Potential Death Penalty

Eighteen-year-old Payton S. Gendron donned military-style clothing, armed himself with a semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle—which he had purchased legally—and entered Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, where he livestreamed himself murdering innocent Black people who had been doing their weekly grocery shopping.

On May 14, 18-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist Payton S. Gendron murdered 10 Black residents at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY. He has been charged by a grand jury with 10 counts of first-degree murder, as well as 10 counts of hate crimes, and three counts of use and discharge of a firearm during a violent crime, which carry the potential of the death penalty.

Gendron has pleaded not guilty.

Gendron had published a white supremacist manifesto online as well as a rant on the website Discord detailing racist conspiracy theories such as “the replacement theory” before the shooting. FBI agents also found a map during their raid of the 18-year-old’s residence in Conklin, a nearly three-hour drive from where the shooting took place.

Gendron had allegedly spent months drawing up a plan to engage in a domestic terrorist attack and said his exposure to 4Chan—an online website that has been associated with the Alt-Right—motivated his extremism. On his assault rifle, he wrote racist messages such as “Here’s your reparations!” And “The Great Replacement,” as well as a racial slur.

He also visited the grocery store multiple times and counted the number of Black people in or around the store area.

FBI agent Christopher J. Dlugokinski wrote in an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint filed on Wednesday that Gendron’s motives were allegedly to “prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race, and to inspire others to commit similar attacks.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the massacre a “horrific attack” that was carried out with the aim of instilling terror, as Gendron allegedly sought to kill as many Black people as possible. He is accused of shooting a total of 13 people aged 20 to 86; two of the individuals were white.

The complaint said that at one point, Gendron turned his gun on a white man who was lying on the ground with an injured leg, but instead of shooting the victim, he said “Sorry” and continued hunting others in the store.

“No one in this country should have to live in fear that they will go to work or shop at the grocery store and will be attacked by someone who hates them because of the color of their skin,” Garland said. “No one in this country should have to bury a loved one because of such hate.” On the morning of the shooting, Garland left a note in his bedroom saying he “had to commit this attack for the future of the white race.”

“My parents know little about me, they don’t know about the hundreds of silver ounces I’ve had, or the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on ammo. They don’t know that I spent close to $1000 on random military s***. They don’t even know I own a shotgun or an AR-15, or illegal magazines,” Gendron wrote online in February.

During the shooting, investigators were told by survivors that they had hid in a stock room, a conference room, a freezer, and a dairy cooler.