Authorities on Wednesday filed federal hate crime charges against the 18-year-old accused of shooting 13 people, killing 10 of them, last month at the Tops Friendly Markets grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
Payton Gendron faces 10 counts of hate crime resulting in death and three counts of hate crime involving bodily injury and attempt to kill, according to a criminal complaint. He also faces 13 firearms-related charges, federal court records show.
Authorities said that on the afternoon of May 14, Gendron targeted Black people at the Tops grocery store “to prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race, and to inspire others to commit similar acts.” Officials allege that Gendron traveled more than 200 miles from his home in Conklin to Buffalo after spending months planning the shooting.
In a criminal complaint, an FBI agent said Gendron fired about 60 shots during the attack. Investigators said they later found a handwritten note signed by him in which he apologized to his family for the shooting and claimed that he “had to commit this attack” because he cares “for the future of the White race.”
In a manifesto written by Gendron and published on the internet before last month’s attack, Gendron called himself “a White man seeking to protect and serve my community, my people, my culture, and my race,” according to investigators. He wrote that he chose to carry out the shooting in Buffalo because its area code had the highest percentage of Black people near where he lived. He livestreamed the shooting and published his manifesto online to spread his beliefs, officials said.
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Gendron added that he’d been planning the attack for several years, according to authorities.
Earlier this month, a grand jury in Erie County indicted Gendron on more than two dozen charges related to the shooting, including ten counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate. He has pleaded not guilty.
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