Tuesday 17 May 2022 01:37 AM White supremacist Buffalo shooter's closest friend is a Hispanic classmate with ... trends now
The white supremacist Buffalo supermarket shooter had only two close friends – a Hispanic man and his black girlfriend, DailyMail.com has learned.
And Payton Gendon would spend much of his spare time with Matt Casado and Skylar McClain at Casado's mobile home.
'I just wish I had never met him,' Skylar, 19, told DailyMail.com in an interview. 'He is a disgrace.
'I always thought he liked me because I was Matt's girlfriend. He was never mean to me. He never did anything that made me think that he was racist.'
Skylar McClain and boyfriend Matt Casado, both 19, are shocked that their friend went on a shooting rampage, killing 10 in a Buffalo supermarket
'He was never mean to me. He never did anything that made me think that he was racist,' Skylar, 19, told DailyMail.com
Neighbor Tim Baker told DailyMail.com: 'This whole thing just doesn’t make sense given who his friend is'
She said she had known him since sixth grade but only started to speak to him last December because he hung out with her boyfriend.
Gendon, Casado and McClain all attended Susquehana Valley High School in Conklin, New York, and all graduated last year.
'I didn’t know he was a racist and whole-heartedly believed he was a good kid till Saturday,' said Casado.
'After 11th grade he was considered weird because he did not talk much and none of his other friends wanted to spend time with him.'
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
Gendon, 18, drove 200 miles from his home in Conklin, near the New York/Pennsylvania border to Buffalo and went on a shooting rampage in a Tops Friendly supermarket, killing 10 and wounding two more.
He was captured by fast acting police and is said to have put his weapon to his own neck before cops persuaded him to put it down.
Police believe he picked that store because it is in a predominantly black area of Buffalo. Of the 12 people he shot, 10 were black.
After the shooting, law enforcement discovered a 180-page manifesto that Gendon posted online and set to go live shortly before he started his drive north.
At the heart of his writings is the racist theory that whites are being replaced by non-whites, who must be driven from the country or slaughtered. Most of his vitriol was aimed at African-Americans and Jews.
As DailyMail.com exclusively revealed, he aimed his gun at a white manager at the store, but walked away apologetically when he realized he was white.
Casado, 19, said Gendon had stopped by his mobile home on Friday, the day before the massacre, and dropped off five boxes of 5.66 mm high-caliber ammunition, a high-powered rifle and two additional boxes of evidence.
'I was infuriated because he thought my house was a storage unit because he said he had to rearrange his house.'
Casado's mother Pamela Burdock insisted he move the boxes into her nearby trailer because she didn't want them. around teens who might visit her son.
‘I told him to put them inside my front door to keep it away from
