At least 10 people died in a shooting perpetrated this Saturday afternoon in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, according to police sources. It happened at the Tops Friendly Market. The assailant was arrested.
According to what could be reconstructed for the moment, the aggressor entered the supermarket with a rifle and opened fire. Authorities believe the man may have been livestreaming the shooting and are investigating whether he posted a manifesto online, sources said as they investigate whether the attack shooting had a racial motive.
Tops Friendly Market is located in a predominantly African-American neighborhood about three miles north of downtown Buffalo. The surrounding area is mainly residential, with a shop of the Family Dollar chain and a fire station near the store.
The murderer burst in wearing a bulletproof vest and an AR-15 rifle and opened fire at close rangewhich unleashed another tragedy of blood and violence in the context of mass murder in the United States.
The number of victims of the killing at the Tops Friendly Market supermarket could have been even worse, considering that it happened on a Saturday afternoon, when that store is usually full of customers.
“I saw him come in and start shooting”assured a witness. Meanwhile, another said that after committing his crimes, “he left (the supermarket), put his gun away, knelt down and turned himself in to the police.” He is now in the custody of the agents.
“We are monitoring the situation,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said. The area adjoining the supermarket was guarded by SWAT, the police assault division, and also by some FBI agents, who were questioning witnesses and reviewing all available videos recorded by people present at the scene.
According to the first advances of the investigation into the identity of the young man, the US security forces detected that in an online video, he defines himself as a supremacist and anti-Semitic, and confesses his “concern” because whites are now being replaced by minorities.
That is why the researchers estimate that the supermarket was not chosen by chance: it is located in a neighborhood inhabited mostly by an African-American population. In the video allegedly spread by the killer on Twitch, “gruesome scenes are seen, including a woman being shot in the head as she leaves the supermarket,” reported the Ansa agency.
US media indicated that the killer had put online a 106 page supremacist conspiracy manifesto in which, among other statements, he said: “I want you to understand only one thing in this document. White birth rates must change. The white population decreases. To maintain its population it is necessary to reach a fertility rate… which in the West should be about 2.06 children per woman”.
The shooting comes just over a year after a March 2021 attack at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, that claimed the lives of 10 people. Detectives have not released information on why they believe the man accused of that attack chose the supermarket.