On Wednesday, a grand jury charged the White 18-year-old suspect in the deadly shootings of ten Black persons at a Buffalo supermarket with domestic terrorism motivated by hatred and ten counts of first-degree murder.
Payton Gendron, who has been in custody since the May 14 shooting, is expected to appear in Erie County Court on Thursday. The 25-count complaint also includes counts of murder and attempted murder as a hate crime, as well as weapons possession. The suspect had already been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting, which also injured three persons.
Payton Gendron Pleads Not Guilty
Gendron pled not guilty. Prosecutors notified a court on May 20 that the grand jury had voted to indict the suspect but was continuing its investigation. Federal investigators are also looking into the prospect of hate crime charges being brought against the suspect, who purportedly explained his intentions and racial motivations in hundreds of pages of writings he put online soon before the shooting.
A helmet-mounted camera was used to webcast the attack. According to detectives, the suspect traveled nearly three hours from his residence in Conklin, New York, with the intent of killing as many Black people as possible. His attorney, Brian Parker, said he hadn't seen the indictment and couldn't comment, noting that the prosecution and defense counsel had been forbidden from discussing the matter publicly by a court, CBS News reported.
Following the assault, Mayor Byron Brown stated that the suspect traveled there to take as many black lives as possible. Since then, a 180-page essay purportedly written by the accused attacker has emerged, in which he labels himself as a fascist and white supremacist.
The gunman, clad in military attire, pulled into the Tops Friendly Market parking lot and began live-streaming the shooting spree. A security guard fired six bullets at the assailant, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, according to authorities. The shooter is suspected of murdering the guard before proceeding with his attack.
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Buffalo Shooting Leads NY to Investigate SocMed Firms
The ten persons that were slain were all black. Among those killed were a dad purchasing cupcakes for his son's birthday and a woman who had gone shopping after seeing her spouse in a nursing facility. Separately, the top prosecutor in New York is looking into whether social media firms facilitated the assault by allowing it to be aired, promoted, or organized through their platforms.
Twitch, the website where the attack was televised, claimed the footage was removed less than two minutes after it began, but not before it was cloned and spread on other streaming sites. The United States is now facing an epidemic of gun-related violence, with the CDC reporting that 54 Americans are killed by a weapon every day.
Only ten days after the Buffalo massacre, an 18-year-old shooter holding the identical AR-15 type assault weapon assaulted a primary school in Uvalde, Texas, murdering 19 children and two adults. Following the Uvalde assault, US President Joe Biden urged American politicians to implement common-sense gun legislation.
Democratic legislators are pressing for stronger limits on firearms and are presently debating which national changes to present to Congress, such as bans on specific types of weapons or further limitations on who may acquire guns.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated on Wednesday that an assault weapon ban is also being explored. However, considering how few Republican senators are sympathetic to additional gun regulation, Senate Democrats will have a difficult time obtaining the 60 votes required to pass an assault weapons ban.
According to Fox News, Attorney General Merrick Garland stated last month that the Justice Department is examining Gendron's acts as a "hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism." Gendron reportedly live-streamed the shooting before it was removed from social media. He also allegedly uploaded a dozens-page treatise describing his obsession with White supremacist ideas, as per BBC.
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