The guard was one of the 10 people shot to death, the nine others all being customers
\n New York
\nAn 18-year-old white gunman shot 10 people to death and wounded three on Saturday at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood of upstate New York, before surrendering after what authorities called an act of \u201cracially motivated violent extremism.\u201d
\nAuthorities said the suspect, who was armed with an assault-style rifle and appeared to have acted alone, drove to Buffalo from his home several hours away to launch the afternoon attack that he broadcast in real time on social media platform Twitch, a live video service owned by Amazon.com (AMZN.O).
\nEleven of the 13 people struck by gunfire were Black, officials said. The two others were white. The racial breakdown of the dead was not made clear.
\nCourt papers named the suspect as Payton Gendron of Conklin, a town of about 5,000 people in New York\u2019s Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border.
\nHe was arraigned hours after the shooting in state court on first-degree murder charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole, said Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. New York has no capital punishment.
\nFlynn said the judge also ordered Gendron to remain in custody without bail and to undergo a \u201cforensic examination.\u201d Gendron was scheduled to return to court on May 19.
\nSurrendered to police
\nAuthorities said the teenager, reported by local media to have been a student at the State University of New York\u2019s Broome Community College near Binghamton, had come close to taking his own life before he was arrested.
\nWhen confronted by officers at the store, the suspect held a gun to his own neck, but they talked him into dropping the weapon and surrendering, Buffalo police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news briefing.
\nGramaglia said the gunman shot and killed three people in the parking lot of the Tops Friendly Markets outlet before exchanging fire with a retired police officer working as a security guard for the store, but the suspect was protected by his body armor.
\nThe guard was one of the 10 people shot to death, the nine others all being customers. Three other employees of the store, part of a regional chain, were wounded but are expected to survive, authorities said.
\nShonnell Harris, a manager at Tops, told the Buffalo News she thought she heard as many as 70 gunshots and that she fell several times as she ran through the store to a rear exit.
\n\u201cHe looked like he was in the army,\u201d she told the newspaper, describing the camouflage-clad assailant.
\nRetired firefighter Katherine Crofton, who lives nearby, said she witnessed the start of the bloodshed from her porch.
\n\u201cI saw him shoot this woman,\u201d Crofton told the paper. \u201cShe was just going into the store. And then he shot another woman. She was putting groceries into her car. I got down because I did not know if he was going to shoot me.\u201d
\n\u2018Pure evil\u2019
\nStephen Belongia, the FBI special agent in charge of the bureau\u2019s Buffalo field office, said the attack would be investigated both as a hate crime and as an act of \u201cracially motivated violent extremism\u201d under federal law.
\n\u201cThis person was pure evil,\u201d Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said at a news conference, his voice quaking with emotion. \u201cIt was a straight-up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community.\u201d
\nU.S. President Biden decried the shooting as \u201cabhorrent to the very fabric of this nation\u201d in a statement issued late Saturday. \u201cHate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism.\u201d
\nNew York Governor Kathy Hochul told a late-evening news conference she was dismayed that the killer managed to live-stream his attack on social media, which she blamed for hosting a \u201cfeeding frenzy\u201d of violent extremist ideology.
\n\u201cThe fact that that can even be posted on a platform is absolutely shocking,\u201d Hochul said. \u201cThese outlets must be more vigilant in monitoring social media content.\u201d
\nTwitch said in a statement that it removed the livestream less than two minutes after it started and was working to ensure no other accounts re-posted the content. Hochul said it should have been taken down \u201cwithin a second.\u201d
\nScreenshots of the broadcast were posted on social media, including some that appeared to show the shooter holding a gun and standing over a body in the grocery store.
\nA document circulating online that appeared to have been written by the killer sketched out a to-do list for the attack, including cleaning the gun and testing the livestream.
\nIn addition, a 180-page manifesto outlining \u2018The Great Replacement Theory\u2019\u2013the idea that white people are being replaced by minorities in the United States and other countries\u2013also circulated online, reportedly authored by Gendron.
\nA spokesperson for Flynn\u2019s office declined to comment on the documents. The FBI could not immediately be reached for comment.
\nThe governor also said she would introduce a previously planned \u201ccomprehensive\u201d gun control package on Tuesday to \u201caddress further loopholes that exist in our (state) laws.\u201d
\nHochul said the firearm used in the killings was legally purchased but had been illegally modified with a high-capacity magazine, which she said could easily have been purchased legally in Pennsylvania.
\nThe Buffalo shooting follows a pattern of other racially motivated mass murders in recent years, including a Pittsburgh synagogue attack that left 11 congregants dead in October 2018, and the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021 in which a white man killed eight people, targeting Asians.
\nSaturday\u2019s shooting spree was also reminiscent of the attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, when the killer live-streamed the murders on Facebook.
\nBuffalo Mayor Bryon Brown called for unity on what he called a \u201cday of great pain for our community.\u201d
\n\u201cMany of us have been in and out of this supermarket many times,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cWe cannot let this hateful person divide our community or our country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The guard was one of the 10 people shot to death, the nine others all being customers New York An 18-year-old white gunman shot 10 people to death and wounded three on Saturday at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood of upstate New York, before surrendering after what authorities called an act of \u201cracially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7273,7272],"class_list":{"0":"post-260716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-supermarket"},"yoast_head":"\n