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image source, Archyde.com
The young man suspected of fatally shooting 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, deliberately sought out a site with a high black population, authorities say.
The attack is being investigated as a racially motivated act of violent extremism.
The suspect, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, drove more than 200 miles to carry out the attack, police said.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown stated that the suspect arrived with the intention of taking “as many black lives as possible.”
Gendron had previously threatened a shooting at his high school last June, an official told reporters.
This information has raised questions regarding how Payton Gendron was able to carry out the attack when he was already on the radar of the authorities.
There is also a 180-page document, apparently written by Gendron, in which he describes himself as a fascist and white supremacist.
“I want to know what people knew and when they knew it,” he told ABC News New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Letitia James explained that her office will focus on extremist material found online.
image source, Getty Images
The attack has shocked the local community.
“This event was committed by a sick and insane individual who was fed [con una] hateful daily diet,” he said.
The shooting has shocked the local community. One of the attendees at a vigil on Sunday said “it just hurts, why would anyone do that,” reported Archyde.com.
What is known regarding the victims
Of the 13 people shot, police said 11 were black. Among the fatal victims are a man who bought cupcakes for her son’s birthday and a woman who had gone shopping following visiting her husband in a nursing home.
“He literally looked for a ZIP code that had the highest concentration of African-Americans,” said the Rev. Darius Pridgen from the pulpit at True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo.
Some of the victims are Andre Macknielwho bought cupcakes for your child’s birthday; Roberta Drury32 years old, who was going to make a purchase; Aaron Salter, a retired policeman who worked as a supermarket security guard; either Hayward Patterson65 years old, who provided a transportation service to the supermarket for a more affordable price, according to what was reported by The New York Times.
Three more victims are elderly women: Pearl Young77 years old; Ruth Whitfield 88 years old, defender of civil rights and education, and Celestine Chaney 65, who was shopping with her sister, who managed to hide during the shooting.
An all too familiar pattern
Christchurch, New Zealand, El Paso, Pittsburgh, and now Buffalo, United States – all places where racially motivated offenders, radicalized online, led his ideology to deadly extremes.
The attacker in Buffalo, like those before him, live-streamed his violent rampage and left a so-called “manifesto” online. It details his extremist beliefs and is packed with curated statistics, conspiracy theories, and internet memes.
image source, Erie Co DA
As in other US shootings, the suspect left a long trail online.
The file contains reams of racist and anti-Semitic content along with outright admissions that the author is a fascist and white supremacist.
If the author is to be believed, as the document also clearly contains misinformation and pathetic attempts to trick reporters into reporting false stories, he was radicalized early in the covid-19 pandemic, on extremist websites and message boards like 4chan.
Like following the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, big social media companies will have a hard time removing images of the attack.
And it will surely reignite the American debate on gun control, albeit briefly.
But the underlying problem seems as intractable as ever: a global network of young violent extremists, some of whom are motivated to launch deadly attacks on innocent people.
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