How the Buffalo Supermarket Shooter Stalked His Victims

BUFFALO, New York—The suspect in the Buffalo massacre searched online for communities with large black populations and then cased the Tops Friendly Market before he killed 10 people and wounded three more, authorities said on Sunday.

Payton Gendron, 18, is behind bars on suicide watch, so far charged with one count of first-degree murder but a slew of new charges as the investigation into the racist mass shooting continues at high throttle.

The rampage, which was live-streamed on Twitch and foreshadowed in a hate-filled manifesto that investigators are still trying to authenticate, appears to be the work of a white supremacist enthralled by a myth about a plot to wipe out white people.

Police say Gendron’s parents, who are state workers, are cooperating with investigators, who believe that the shooter—clad in body armor and carrying a Bushmaster assault rifle—acted alone in carrying out the worse mass shooting this year.

The owner of Vintage Firearms in Endicott, New York, told The New York Times that he sold the military-style weapon to Gendron after he passed a background check and didn’t remember him. The manifesto says the shooter modified the gun.

“I just can’t believe it. I don’t understand why an 18-year-old would even do this,” gun seller Robert Donald said. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but I feel terrible about it.”

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told reporters on Sunday that on Friday, Gendron drove from his hometown of Conklin, New York, three hours away to Tops.

“It seems that he had come here to scope out the area, to do a little reconnaissance work on the area before he carried out his, just, evil, sickening act,” Gramaglia said Sunday. He vowed that the attack “will be prosecuted as a hate crime.”

The purported manifesto alluded to reconnaissance in aid of a racist assault and pointed to the extensive focus on the security at the store, their weapons, and their usual location.

“This individual came here with the express purpose of taking as many Black lives as he could,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said.

Authorities previously indicated the incident had all the bearings of an extremist attack motivated by hate, but the remarks on Sunday represented the clearest indication yet that the charges against Gendron would be upgraded. Gramaglia added that the FBI was bringing in specialized equipment to process the crime scene.

Footage of the shooting revealed Gendron was wearing a helmet-mounted camera when he exited a car with a rifle. The weapon appeared to be inscribed with racist slurs and other messages, including a reference to a parade attack by a Black driver in Waukesha, Wisconsin last year that has become an obsession in far-right circles.

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He shot four people in the parking lot before striding into the stop where Aaron Salter Jr., a 30-year veteran of the Buffalo Police Department working as a security guard, pulled out his weapon and tried to take down the teenager. Gendron killed him before fatally shooting more people inside the store and attempting to leave, at which point he was convinced to surrender, police said.

“The Buffalo Police responded in less than 2 minutes... They saved a lot of lives because of that,” Mayor Brown said.

Gramaglia noted that Gendron was brought in for mental-health evaluation by state police last June after a general threat at a Binghamton-area high school. The commissioner said that the prior incident was not racial in nature, and FBI Special Agent Stephen Belongia suggested the teen was not on the radar of authorities prior to that episode.

Former Susquehanna Valley High School classmates told The New York Times that Gendron exhibited odd behavior leading up to their graduation last year—including wearing a full hazmat suit to class.

“He wore the entire suit: boots, gloves, everything,” 19-year-old Nathan Twitchell said. “Everyone was just staring at him.”

Another classmate, Cassaundra Williams, told the paper that Gendron rarely came to school, opting to do classes online. Williams added that her former classmates were shocked that Gendron, who “was always very quiet,” could have carried out such a grisly attack.

“We were just so shocked. We can’t even wrap our heads around it still,” she added.

Residents gathered around the Tops on Jefferson Avenue Sunday morning for a vigil to honor the victims, who were shopping in a predominantly Black area in the highly segregated city.

Members of Buffalo Peacemakers and Stop the Violence Coalition, among other groups and clergy, organized the vigil. Traffic to the roads surrounding the grocery store had been blocked off by police. The Tops property had been blocked off with caution tape, as well.

By 9 a.m., nearly 100 people had congregated in front of the market. A pile of bouquets grew around the small candle memorial that had been set up the night before.

A woman wearing all red and holding a large, bright-pink sign reading “Black Lives Matter” walked down the center of Jefferson Avenue to join the crowd, calling out “Black lives matter, my life matters!”