Payton Gendron scoped out Tops Supermarket in Buffalo as HOMELESS vagrant on day before attack
BUFFALO, NEW YORK: Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron, 18, made a “reconnaissance” trip to the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo a day before he gunned down 10 people there, the city’s police commissioner reportedly said. “We know he did some reconnaissance on the area and in the store,” Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said during a press conference with Gov. Kathy Hochul and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. “He was in the Buffalo area. He was right in this area the day before,” he added.
Shonnell Teague, manager of Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, claimed that Gendron visited the store disguised as a homeless person on Friday, May 13. "He was acting like he was homeless and needed change," Teague told The New York Daily News. "He really was checking out the store." Gendron allegedly traveled about 200 miles from his family’s home in Conklin, NY, to the supermarket to carry out the massacre. He researched neighborhood demographics in an attempt to find a predominantly Black community area. 11 of the victims were Black and two of them were White.
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Gendron is reportedly believed to have posted a white supremacist manifesto, outlining his step-by-step plan. Officials revealed that Payton Gendron claimed in a 180-page diatribe that he was 'radicalized' on the internet while he was bored during the early pandemic days, not by people he has personally met. The self-described white supremacist and anti-Semite apparently learned through his "research" that low white birth rates around the world was a "crisis" that "will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people." In one section of the manifesto, Gendron detailed his step-by-step plans for the day of the shooting. He also wrote about the corned beef hash he would eat for breakfast. He planned how he would drive to the supermarket, wear his body armor and carry his gun. He also wrote about live streaming the attack.
Gendron reportedly began planning the attack in January. He chose the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo because “it has the highest black population percentage” by Zip code, and also because it was not very far away from his Southern Tier home. Reportedly, the Buffalo massacre is the latest in a wave of mass shootings that were inspired by the 'Great Replacement theory' — a racist theory popular among white supremacists and the far-right.
Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said that officials are considering charging Gendron with domestic terrorism. "We're looking at potentially multiple additional charges to be filed," Flynn told Fox News. "We are looking at domestic terrorism charges, we are looking at hate crime charges, there's actually a charge in New York State called domestic terrorism motivated by hate. So, that charge right there encompasses the actual terrorism and the hate charge together, all in one charge." Gendron has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, and is being held without bail.
Talking about other racially motivated killings in his manifesto, Gendron said that he "mostly agreed" with Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a man who live-streamed his attack which ultimately left 51 people attending a New Zealand mosque in March 2019 dead. The 31-year-old Brenton Tarrant was sentenced to jail for life without parole after he killed 51 people and wounded 40 others at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019.
Australian national Tarrant, also a White supremacist like Gendron, stormed two mosques in the area, armed with military-style semi-automatic firearms, and opened fire at Muslims gathered for Friday prayers. He even live-streamed the massacre using a head-mounted camera.