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Buffalo supermarket shooting motivated by hatred of blacks

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Payton Gendron Conklin NY
Payton Gendron Conklin, NY man who targeted Buffalo Tops supermarket and who wrote 180 page manifesto critical of blacks. Images via police bookings and Twitch Livestream.
Payton Gendron manifesto
Payton Gendron Conklin, NY man who targeted Buffalo Tops supermarket and who wrote 180 page manifesto critical of blacks.

Payton Gendron Conklin, NY man id as Buffalo Tops supermarket mass shooter and white supremacist who targeted blacks killing 10. 180 page manifesto criticized critical race theory and championed great replacement theory. 

A teenage gunman who allegedly murdered 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket in upstate NY planned the attack for months, with the shooter motivated by his hated of black people according to investigators. 

Federal agents interviewed the parents of Payton S. Gendron, the teenager accused of firing no less than 50 gunshots at a Tops local store, killing 10 people, injuring another three in a mass shooting according to a law enforcement official over the weekend. Of the thirteen people shot, 11 were black. 

Gendron, 18, of Conklin, Broome County, NY, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder following Saturday’s attack. He was being held without bail and faces life in prison.

The alleged killer, who is due back in court on Thursday, was on suicide watch and was being held in a separate unit from other inmates, the sheriff of Erie County, John Garcia, said at the news conference Sunday.

Gendron’s civil engineer parents, Paul and Pamela were cooperating with investigators.

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‘Just got to go for it, right?’ 

Police say a rambling text of a 180-page manifesto that Gendron posted online before the mass shooting included a plan of the attack which detailed driving several counties away to carry out the shooting at the Tops Friendly Market.

Gendron according to the uncorroborated document identified himself as a white supremacist, who feared white people being replaced by other races, police said.

The author according to police described himself as having no military background along with never having been diagnosed with a mental disability or disorder.

The gunman, dressed in armor, drove more than three hours away from his Conklin home before arriving at the Buffalo supermarket just on 2.30 p.m, Saturday afternoon, where he is heard uttering to himself, ‘just got to go for it, right?’ Getting out of his vehicle, the teen shot at shoppers in the parking lot before proceeding to enter the store. It remained unclear why Gendon had chosen Buffalo and the supermarket as the focal point of his rampage.

Gendron shot four people outside the store, three fatally before proceeding to walk into the store and killing his next victim, a security guard, who had fought to ward off the gunman, firing at him, only for Gendron to fatally pick off the security guard.

‘You hear him walk into the store shooting people, just, ‘pop, pop, pop,’ Katherine Crofton told the New York Post. ‘He was in full combat gear – helmet, body armor, everything. He was loaded.’

A further six victims were shot dead inside before Gendron surrendered to responding police, who convinced the gunman to put down a gun he had pointed at his own neck. 

Targeted blacks even letting white man live

Investigators speculate Gendron had specifically researched the demographics of the population around the Tops Friendly Markey and had been searching for communities with a high number of African American residents. The market is located in a predominantly black neighborhood.

Police said Gendron, wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera, shot, in total, 11 Black people and two white people Saturday in a rampage that the 18-year-old broadcast live before surrendering to authorities.

Police said Gendron had walked through the supermarket looking for specific people to target, with his victims likely targeted as a result of the color of their skin. 

Screenshots purporting to be from the Twitch broadcast (taken down within 2 minutes of going live) appear to show a racial epithet scrawled on the rifle used in the attack, as well as the number 14, a likely reference to a white supremacist slogan.

By Sunday, seven of the ten fatalities had been named, including that of security guard, Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer – who fired multiple shots at Gendron. A bullet hit the gunman’s armor, but had no effect. Gendron then killed Salter, before hunting more victims.

Shopper, Ruth Whitfield, a local 86-year-old grandmother, was also killed after having gone to the store to pick up some groceries, according to Buffalo News.

Inspired by other white supremacist motivated shootings 

Also killed was Pearly Young, 77, best known for assisting and feeding needy locals. 

Other victims included, Celestine Chaney, 65, Roberta Drury, 32, who had gone to the supermarket to pick up ingredients for dinner. 

Heyward Patterson, who would often give people rides to and from the supermarket and help them carry their groceries, was also among the 10 people fatally shot, according to relatives. 

Officials said the rifle Gendron used in the attack was purchased legally but the magazines he used for ammunition were not allowed to be sold in New York.

Robert Donald, the owner of Vintage Firearms in Endicott, N.Y., told the New York Times on Sunday that he recently sold a Bushmaster assault weapon to the teen. 

Donald, 75, who primarily sells collectible firearms, said the teen bought the gun without leaving an impression and was shocked to find out Gendron implicated in the mass shooting. 

Investigators say Gendron had repeatedly visited sites espousing white supremacist ideologies and race-based conspiracy theories and extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the man who killed up to 67 and injured 32 at a summer camp in Oslo, Norway in 2011, the official said.

The weekend shooting is the latest mass violent act in the U.S, as the nation deals with increased gun violence, hate crime and mass shootings in the aftermath of the COVID amid unwavering social and economic tension.

Saturday’s mass shooting in Buffalo came a day after Texas authorities sought a gunman accused of shooting at three Korean women at a Dallas hair salon in what police say was a targeted hate crime on Asians.

Social discord in the U.S 

The Buffalo attack also came a month after a shooting on a Brooklyn subway wounded 10 in which a black gunman had sought to target white people.

Leading up to the massacre, there were clues as to what Gendron could be capable of.

Officials at the Susquehanna Valley High School brought in New York State Police to investigate Gendron in June of 2021 after he made statements that he would shoot fellow students.

‘A school official reported that this very troubled young man had made statements indicating that he wanted to do a shooting, either at a graduation ceremony, or sometime after,’ a government source told the Buffalo News.

After police looked into the account, Gendron was referred for mental health evaluation and counseling.

Classmates said that he often acted strangely at times and espoused extremist views on politics.

Last year, one former student recalled, Gendron wearing a hazmat suit to school for a week. She believed it had something to do with protecting himself from the coronavirus, but she didn’t rule out the fact that he was making a joke.

There were other indications of Gendron’s fragile mental state.

During a class exercise in political class in which the students created their own countries with the government of their choice, Gendron’s pick was an autocratic regime that the classmate described as ‘Hitler-esque.’

Payton Gendron parents
Pictured, Payton Gendron parents, Paul and Pamela Gendron of Conklin, NY. Image via FB.

‘His views were extreme’ 

‘His views were extreme,’ the student said. ‘You could pick any form of government that you wanted and he picked a totalitarian government.’

Gendron is one of four boys born to Paul and Pamela Gendron, two civil engineers with the state who live in Conklin, NY, three and half hours south of Buffalo. Paul coached his kids in the town soccer league and at least one neighbor found him ‘strange.’ His mother appeared conceited, locals said according to Buffalo News.

‘He’s from this pristine family,’ a schoolmate told the outlet. ‘They have everything together, they were just perfect.’

The family appears to be a tight-knit suburban family that played LaserTag together, when to Autumn festivals, the beach and dined together in restaurants. Neighbors said they were odd.

‘To be honest, the mother was kind of snooty,’ a local parent who asked not to be named said. ‘Like she was better than everyone else. The father was strange. Like when you meet someone and they just seem off.’

A neighbor recalled the teen shooter bringing home a human-sized Brontosaurus that he build for a school project. School records show that Gendron was a good student and made high honors in his senior year, scoring higher than 92 percent in all his classes.

Facebook photos show that Gendron went on a few college tours and spent some time enrolled in Broome County Community College. A college spokeswoman told he Buffalo News that he was no longer enrolled.

‘They have a really nice family,’ neighbor Nancy Santucci said. ‘They seem like regular people. In a million years I never would think that anyone from this neighborhood would drive to Buffalo to carry out a racially motivated shooting.’

‘I’m just shocked,’ she said.

In a 180-page manifesto, which Gendron posted online before the shooting, the teen expressed concerns that whites were being replaced in American by people of color.

The teen told of being influenced 4Chan, the same online chat group that launched Qanon. In his manifesto, Gendron described ‘critical race theory’ as a Jewish plot to undermine white which he argues is a reason to kill Jews.

He also refers to other mass shootings carried out to further racist ideology like Dylan Roof, who who killed nine people in a black church in South Carolina and New Zealand gunman, Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in mosque.

Payton Gendron manifesto
Payton Gendron manifesto was critical of critical race theory while espousing Great Replacement Theory.

Great Replacement Theory

Gendron also espoused the ‘great replacement theory’, which claims Democrats are deliberately importing illegal migrants into the US wholesale to achieve electoral dominance while driving whites to extinction.

To date, Gendron had only been charged with one count of first-degree murder. Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said his office was working with federal authorities to bring further terrorism, hate crime and murder charges.

The Tops supermarket released a statement on Sunday morning, according to News9 in which the outlet stated: 

‘The Tops family is heartbroken over the senseless violence that impacted associates and customers at our store on Jefferson Avenue.

‘We are working quickly to make sure that all of our associates have access to counseling and support that they may need.

‘Tops has been committed to this community and the city of Buffalo for decades and this tragedy will not change that commitment.

‘We are working to find alternatives for our customers in this community while our store is closed and will provide updates in the near future.’

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