Sunday 15 May 2022 02:04 PM Buffalo shooter planned attack for months and drove hours to gun down 10 in ... trends now

A teenaged gunman who allegedly murdered 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket planned the attack for months before he drove for three hours to carry out the vile ambush that was allegedly motivated by the white supremacist's hated of black people.  

Payton Gendron, 18, of Conklin, NY, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He is being held without bail and faces life in prison. He is due back in court on Thursday.

Police say the rambling text of a 180-page manifesto that Gendron posted before going on his rampage, included a plan of the attack which detailed driving several counties away to carry out the shooting at the Tops Friendly Market.

'The shooter traveled hours from outside this community to perpetrate this crime on the people of Buffalo, a day when people were enjoying the sunshine, enjoying family, enjoying friends,' Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said at a Saturday evening news conference. 

'People in a supermarket, shopping and bullets raining down on them. People's lives being snuffed out in an instant for no reason.' 

Gendron identified himself as a white supremacist in his manifesto, as he explained his fears that white people are being replaced by other races. 

Thirteen people were shot, with three suffering non-life threatening injuries. Out of 13 of those victims, 11 were African American and two were White, authorities said.

Four of the people shot were store employees, Gramaglia said. One, the security guard, was killed while the other three suffered 'non-fatal wounds,' he said.

The two victims so far named are retired cop turned store security guard Aaron Salter and shopper Ruth Whitfield, an 86 year-old grandmother.

 The FBI is investigating the shooting as both a hate crime and a case of racially motivated violent extremism, said Stephen Belongia, FBI special agent in charge of the Buffalo field office.

Officials at the Susquehanna Valley High School brought in New York State Police to investigate Gendron n June of 2021 after he made statements that he would shoot fellow students.

A year later he ended up shooting 13 people - 10 of them fatally - during an attack motivated by his hatred for black people at a Top Market supermarket in Buffalo. 

'A school official reported that this very troubled young man had made statements indicating that he wanted to do a shooting, either at a graduation ceremony, or sometime after,' a government source told the Buffalo News.

After police looked into the account, Gendron was referred for mental health evaluation and counseling.

Classmates said that he often acted strangely at times and espoused extremist views on politics.

Last year, one former student recalled, Gendron wore a hazmat suit to school for a week. She believed it had something to do with protecting himself from the coronavirus, but she didn't rule out the fact that he was making a joke.

'It was the most extra thing that I ever saw him do,' a former classmate who asked not to be named said.

There were other indications of Gendron's fragile mental state.

During a class exercise in political class in which the students created their own countries with the government of their choice, Gendron's pick was an autocratic regime that the classmate described as 'Hitler-esque.'

'His views were extreme,' the student said. 'You could pick any form of government that you wanted and he picked a totalitarian government.'

The classmate recalled that he almost collided with her head on in his car, but she brushed it off at the time to careless driving.

'He was definitely into video games - shooter games,' she said.

'It's so mind-blowing to think that it could have been us,' she said. 'I know he had his manifesto, but what if he decided to do a test run on us.'

For the most part he was quiet, but she said he would 'smile weirdly' when he spoke to people. She said she didn't remember him every having a girlfriend.

Gendron is one of four boys born to Paul and Pamela Gendron, two civil engineers with the state who live in Conklin, NY, three and half hours south of Buffalo. Paul coached his kids in the town soccer league and at least one neighbor found him 'strange.' His mother appeared conceited, locals said.

'He's from this pristine family,' a schoolmate said. 'They have everything together, they were just perfect.'

In photos posted by his mother on Facebook, Payton Gendron appears to tower over his father and others.

'He was 6'1' or 6'2'' his schoolmate said. 'He was a big guy.'

The family appears to be a tight-knit suburban family that played LaserTag together, when to Autumn festivals, the beach and dined together in restaurants.

Neighbors said they were odd.

'To be honest, the mother was kind of snooty,' a local parent who asked not to be named said. 'Like she was better than everyone else. The father was strange. Like when you meet someone and they just seem off.'

A neighbor recalled him bringing home a human-sized Brontosaurus that he build for a school project. School records show that he was a good student and made high honors in his senior year, scoring higher than 92 percent in all his classes.

Facebook photos show that Gendron went on a few college tours and spent some time enrolled in Broome County Community College. A college spokeswoman told he Buffalo News that he was no longer enrolled.

'They have a really nice family,' neighbor Nancy Santucci said. 'They seem like regular people. In a million years I never would think that anyone from this neighborhood would drive to Buffalo to carry out a racially motivated shooting.'

'I'm just shocked,' she said.

The young man posted a 180-page manifesto online before the shooting espousing the paranoid white supremacist views that whites were being replaced in American by people of color.

In the screed, he says that he was radicalize by 4Chan, the same online chat group that launched Qanon. He claims that critical race theory is a Jewish plot to undermine white which he argues is a reason to kill Jews.

He also refers to other mass shootings carried out to further racist ideology like Dylan Roof, who who killed nine people in a black church in South Carolina and New Zealand lunatic Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in mosque.

Gendron also espoused the 'great replacement theory', which claims Democrats are deliberately importing illegal migrants into the US wholesale to achieve electoral dominance while driving whites to extinction.

On Saturday night, Gendron who was barefoot, masked and wearing a paper smock, told the judge that he understood the charge against and was not guilty at an arraignment Saturday evening.

He has only been charged with one count of first-degree murder. Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said the judge ordered a forensic examination and ordered him held without bail.

'We have taken the necessary steps to get him behind bars,' he said. 'That was justice. Getting that first murder charge filed immediately.'

The DA said that they are working with federal authorities to bring further terrorism, hate crime and murder charges.

He made no other comment, and Gendron's lawyer confirmed he planned to plead not guilty to the killings. Conklin has since been pictured in social media profiles.

Hours earlier Gendron was caught by police emerging from the Tops Friendly Supermarket, at 1275 Jefferson Avenue about 2.30pm

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