A New York man whom police allege killed ten people at a Buffalo grocery store was charged with murder Saturday. Erie County Sheriff John Garcia reportedly described the incident as a “racially motivated hate crime.”
Shortly after Payton S. Gendron, 18, was captured, a manifesto believed to have been posted by the alleged gunman was found. The screed contains remarks labeled by authorities as racist and anti-immigrant. The remarks claim White Americans were being replaced by people of color. Gendron reportedly wore a camera attached to a helmet he wore while he allegedly shot 13 people at the Topps Friendly Market in East Buffalo, N.Y., and live-streamed the incident using Twitch. In some footage of the barrel of the weapon allegedly wielded by Gendron, a racial epithet that Black people object to White people using appears on the barrel of his weapon.
A Twitter user posted a screen capture that allegedly depicts the weapon brandished by the grocery store shooter. White letters on the black barrel of the assault weapon appear to spell the name Virginia Sorenson. “Buffalo shooter wrote the names of Waukesha victims on his barrel guard,” remarked the Twitter user. “Virginia Sorenson is pretty clear.”
Sorenson was a 79-year-old White woman killed during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc., last year when a Black man plowed into a crowd, killing six.
The manifesto attributed to Gendron is being reviewed by law enforcement. In it, Gendron, a student at a Binghamton, N.Y., community college, wrote he selected the area because it held the largest percentage of Black residents near his home in the state’s Southern Tier, a predominantly White region that borders Pennsylvania.
The document contained a detailed plan to kill as many Black people as possible. It had details down to the type of gun he would use, a timeline and where to eat before beginning the attack.
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