Updated 2 hours ago
Police said the suspect had conducted a “reconnaissance” of the area the day before the shooting
US authorities say a man suspected of killing 10 people in a supermarket in the Buffalo area of New York deliberately sought a location with a large number of black people.
Police say the suspect, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, drove more than 320 kilometers to carry out the attack.
The attack is being investigated as an act of racially motivated violent extremism.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the suspect arrived intending to take “as many black lives as possible.”
There are questions about how he was able to carry out the attack while the authorities were already monitoring it.
A law enforcement official told the Associated Press that Gendron had earlier threatened to shoot his high school in June. He then underwent a mental health test.
A 180-page document apparently written by Gidron appeared in which he describes himself as a fascist and white supremacist.
“I want to know what people knew and when they knew it,” New York Governor Cathy Hochhol told ABC News.
Police said the suspect had conducted a “reconnaissance” of the area the day before the shooting.
Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Leticia James said her office would focus on extremist material posted online.
“This act was perpetrated by a sick and insane person fueled by a daily system of hate,” she said.
The shooting shocked the local community. Archyde.com reported that one of those who attended the vigil on Sunday said, “It hurts, why would someone do that.”
Of the 13 people shot dead, 11 were black, police said. Among the dead, a man was buying sweets for his son’s birthday and a woman who went shopping after visiting her husband in a nursing home.
Very familiar style by Mike WindlingBBC wantying
picture released, ERIE CO DA
The gunman in Buffalo, like others before, left his so-called “manifesto” on the Internet.
Christchurch, El Paso, Pittsburgh, and now Buffalo are all places where racially motivated attackers have taken their ideology to the extreme.
The Buffalo gunman, like others before, broadcast his violent frenzy on air and left the so-called “manifesto” on the Internet. This statement details his extremist beliefs and is full of selective statistics and conspiracy theories.
The file contains racist and anti-Semitic sludge as well as frank admissions that its author is a fascist and white supremacist.
If the author is to be believed, as the document also clearly contains misinformation and attempts to deceive reporters into reporting false stories, he was radicalized early on during the coronavirus pandemic, on extremist websites and online forums.
Just as happened after the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, major social media companies will struggle to remove video footage of the attack.
The American debate over gun control will surely arise again, but only for a short period of time.
But the fundamental problem seems more intractable than ever: a global network of young extremists, some of whom are eager to launch deadly attacks against innocents.
The attacker, who was dressed in military fatigues, stormed the car park of Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo at about 14:30 EST (19:30 GMT) and began a live broadcast of the attack.
The police said that one of the security guards fired several shots in return, but one of the bulletproof vests stopped him. Then he killed the guard and chased after the people in the store shooting them.
Gendron was arrested after the attack and denied the murder charge.
Witnesses described horrific scenes. One of them said, “It’s like a nightmare…You see this on TV, you hear about it on TV…But I never thought I’d be one of them.”
US President Joe Biden said that the facts are still being examined, but he strongly condemned racial extremism, and said, “We must all work together to confront the hatred that remains a stain on the soul of America.”
Attorney General James described the attack as “clear and simple domestic terrorism”.
Saturday’s attack in Buffalo is believed to be the worst mass shooting to date in the United States in 2022. About 40,000 deaths annually are linked to firearms use in the United States, a number that includes suicides.