An 18-year-old white man opened fire Saturday at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. At least ten people, the majority of them African Americans, have died. The point on what we know.
What happened ?
According to the authorities, the killer, heavily armed with an “assault weapon”, a bulletproof vest, military-style clothing, a helmet and a camera to broadcast his crime in live on the Internet, first shoots four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket. Three of them are killed. Then the killer enters the mall to commit his carnage.
There, a security guard, a retired policeman, shoots the assailant but the latter, protected by his bulletproof vest, is not injured. The guard is shot.
Soon the police arrived on the scene. The young man turns his weapon against him, at the level of the blow, then surrenders to the police, explain the authorities.
What is the balance sheet?
Buffalo Police Chief Joseph Gramaglia reports “ten people killed” and three others injured in this predominantly African-American neighborhood of Buffalo. Eleven were black people and two were white,
Who is the shooter?
The killer was immediately arrested on the spot, initially prosecuted for “premeditated murder” and imprisoned. It is a young white man. According to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, he is a “white supremacist”.
According to Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, the shooter, whose identity is not yet known, would have traveled several hours to commit his crime.
“We are investigating this incident as both a hate crime and a case of racially motivated violent extremism,” said Buffalo FBI Police Officer Stephen Belongia.
What are his motives ?
By starting his killing, the shooter, equipped with a camera, began to broadcast his crime live on the Twitch platform. According to the social network, the content was deleted “two minutes” after it began to be broadcast, the attacker’s account was “permanently suspended” and “all accounts likely to repost this content are under surveillance”. American media also mentioned a racist “manifesto” posted on the Internet.
According to the New York Times, citing this “manifesto”, the suspect was “inspired” by crimes committed by white supremacists, including the 2019 massacre of 51 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The Buffalo News newspaper even revealed that an offensive, racist and taboo word in the United States for black people had been painted in white on the barrel of the weapon.
Twitch declared itself “devastated” and promised “zero tolerance against all forms of violence”.
The reactions
In a statement, US President Joe Biden denounced the attack, recalling that “any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is contrary to everything we stand for in America”.
This attack is “a crime motivated by hate and racism”, perpetrated by “evil incarnate”, adds the sheriff of the county of Erie, John Garcia.
The previous ones
This killing is reminiscent of two others: a racist massacre on August 3, 2019 whena 21-year-old far-right man had killed 23 people, including eight Mexicans and “Hispanic” people in El Paso, Texas; and when the June 17, 2015 a white supremacist had killed nine African-American worshipers in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. In both cases, hateful manifestos had been posted online before the attacks.
Serial shootings and murders in the United States in public places are tragically almost daily and gun crime is on the rise in major cities like New York, Chicago, Miami or San Francisco, especially since the coronavirus pandemic. 2020. In 2021, firearms killed nearly 45,000 people in the United States, including about 24,000 suicides, according to the organization Gun Violence Archive.