On Saturday afternoon, an 18-year-old white gunman opened fire inside and outside a supermarket in a mostly Black Buffalo area, killing ten people and injuring three others. The gunman murdered only Black victims. Half of them were 65 or older.
Payton Gendron, the gunman, opened fire at the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue in the Masten Park neighborhood on Buffalo’s East Side, about two miles north of downtown.
Here’s what Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said Saturday:
“This was pure evil. It was straight up a racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community … coming into our community and trying to inflict that evil upon us. This is the worst nightmare that any community can face, and we are hurting and we are seething right now.”
Around 2:30 p.m., police said. The gunman drove up to the front of the supermarket on Saturday, got out of his car, and started shooting people in the parking lot. He was armed with a high-capacity magazine and a high-powered AR-15-style assault rifle. Body armor and a helmet with a GoPro camera were also worn by the gunman, who utilized Twitch to webcast the incident.
The rounds were blocked by his body armor when an armed security guard, retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter, fired at the shooter. After shooting and killing Salter, the gunman entered the business and started his slaughter.
Here’s an excerpt from an Associated Press report:
Portions of the Twitch video circulating online showed the gunman firing volley after volley of shots in less than a minute as he raced through the parking lot and then the store, pausing for just a moment to reload. At one point, he trains his weapon on a white person cowering behind a checkout counter, but says “Sorry!” and doesn’t shoot.
A store employee who was able to run and escape through the supermarket’s back said that she thought she heard as many as 70 shots. Those who were unable to flee the store tried to hide from the shooter.
Following the police officers’ response, a second rifle and a shotgun were found in his car. The assault rifle he used in the attack was adorned with a racist slur and a number that corresponds to a white supremacist slogan, but authorities hadn’t yet said how or when he obtained his guns.
Investigators believe Gendron had specifically researched the demographics of the population around the Tops Friendly Market and had been searching for communities with a high number of African American residents, the report added.
Eleven of the 13 victims were black, including the gunman’s victims, and two were white. The other nine people were customers and four were Tops employees. Buffalo Police disclosed the identities of the victims, who ranged in age from 20 to 86, on Sunday night. There are five senior citizens among the dead.
In a 180-page document packed with racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic views that the gunman allegedly published online prior to the attack, he said he was going to try to kill as many Black people as he could, and cited the so-called “Great Replacement” theory popular among white supremacists.
However, corporate media are pushing the false narratives that the 18-year-old is a conservative Christian and an avid fan of Fox News.
More details from Western Journal:
In his racist and anti-Semitic manifesto, Gendron undercut the liberal media narrative that he’s a Christian conservative who was radicalized by Fox News.
But on page 7, the shooter expressly stated he is not Christian.
“Are you a Christian? No,” Gendron wrote. “I do not ask God for salvation by faith, nor do I confess my sins to Him. I personally believe there is no afterlife. I do however believe in and practice many Christian values.”
Elsewhere on page 7, he wrote: “Are you a facsist? Yes, fascism is one of the only political ideologies that will unite Whites against the replacers. Since that is what I seek, calling me a facsist would be accurate.”
On page 8, he slammed conservatism: “Are you a conservative? No, conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”
On page 9, Gendron explained how his affinity for communism influenced his ideology: “When I was 12, I was deep into communist ideology, talk to anyone from my old highschool and ask about me and you will hear that.
“From age 15 to 18 however, I consistently moved farther to the right. On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category, and I would prefer to be called a populist.”
On page 158, Gendron declared in capital letters: “CONSERVATISM IS DEAD, THANK GOD.”
The rampage in Buffalo was the deadliest white supremacist attack carried out in the U.S. since the El Paso Walmart massacre in 2019.
Governor Hochul, a Buffalo native, flew to the city from Albany soon after the attack and said at a Saturday-night press conference:
“There is no depth to my outrage” over what happened. She specifically cited the fight against white supremacists in her remarks as well: “It strikes us in our very heart to know that such evil lurks out there. Yes, I’m here to console the families and the community that is feeling so much pain right now, but mark my words, we’ll be aggressive in our pursuit of anyone who subscribes to the ideals professed by other white supremacists.”
Watch it here: Youtube/MSNBC
Sources: Westernjournal, Apnews, Opb.org