An 18-year-old white shooter killed ten people and injured three more at a grocery shop in Buffalo’s Black neighborhood before surrendering in what officials labeled an act of “racially motivated violent extremism.”
Following a mass shooting in the grocery store parking lot, injured individuals lie on the ground.
Authorities said the suspect, who was armed with an assault-style rifle and looked to have acted alone, went to Buffalo from his residence several hours away to execute a Saturday afternoon attack that he broadcast live on the social media site Twitch, an Amazon.com-owned live streaming service.
According to police, eleven of the thirteen victims hit by gunfire were Black. The other two were white. The racial makeup of the deceased was not disclosed.
Payton Gendron of Conklin, a community of roughly 5,000 people in New York’s Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, was listed as the suspect in court filings.
He was charged in state court hours after the shooting on first-degree murder charges, which carry a potential punishment of life in prison without the possibility of release, according to Erie County District Attorney John Flynn. New York does not have the death penalty. According to Flynn, the court also ordered Gendron to be held without bail and to undergo a “forensic examination.” Gendron was set to appear in court again on May 19.
Authorities claimed the adolescent, who was a student at the State University of New York’s Broome Community College near Binghamton, was on the verge of committing suicide before being apprehended.