US: 10 people killed in a racially motivated mass shooting

New York authorities on Sunday were investigating how a white 18-year-old, who the governor said had been on the radar of authorities since high school, was able to shoot 10 people to death in a Black neighborhood grocery store.

The suspect, Payton Gendron, surrendered to police on Saturday at the Buffalo, New York, store after what authorities called an act of “racially motivated violent extremism.” He apparently publicized a racist manifesto on the internet.

“The evidence that we have uncovered so far makes no mistake this is an absolute racist hate crime that will be prosecuted as a hate crime,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told reporters on Sunday.

Eleven people struck by gunfire were Black and two were white, officials said. The racial breakdown of the dead was not made clear.

The Buffalo shooting follows other racially motivated mass murders in recent years, including a Pittsburgh synagogue attack that left 11 dead in October 2018, and the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021 in which a white man killed eight people, targeting Asians.

Authorities said Gendron drove to Buffalo from his home several hours away to launch the afternoon attack, which he broadcast in real time on social media platform Twitch, a live video service owned by Amazon.com.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the firearm used in the killings was legally purchased but had been illegally modified with a high-capacity magazine.

On Sunday, several dozen community members held an emotional vigil for the victims outside the Tops grocery store. Nearby at True Bethel Baptist Church, a reverend led a solemn service for a large crowd of worshipers, including some family of the victims and some who had been at the store at the time of the shooting.

One was Charles Everhart Sr., 65, whose grandson Zaire Goodman, 20, worked at the store. Goodman was shot in the neck but survived.

“He was pushing the carts back to the store and he was one of the first to get hit,” Everhart said.

Racist manifesto

A 180-page manifesto circulating online on Saturday, believed to have been authored by Gendron, outlined “The Great Replacement Theory” - a racist conspiracy theory that white people are being replaced by minorities in the United States and other countries.

“This manifesto tells everything to us and that is what’s so bone-chilling about it,” Hochul told CNN on Sunday.

Another document circulating online that appeared to have been written by Gendron sketched out a to-do list for the attack, including cleaning the gun and testing the livestream.

A spokesperson for the Erie County district attorney’s office declined to comment on the documents.

Hochul told ABC News on Sunday that Gendron had been on authorities’ radar “with respect to something he wrote in high school,” without elaborating.

The governor said an investigation into the massacre would focus on how Gendron managed to get away with it when he was known to authorities and presented a threat.

U.S. President Biden decried the shooting as “abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation” in a statement on Saturday.