2022 Buffalo shooting

2022 Buffalo shooting
Part of mass shootings in the United States
Tops supermarket, Jefferson Avenue, in February 2022
Location	1275 Jefferson Avenue, Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Coordinates	42°54′35″N 78°51′10″W
Date	May 14, 2022 (2022-05-14) c. 2:30 – 2:36 p.m. (EDT; UTC−04:00)
Attack type	Mass shooting
Weapon	Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle
Deaths	10
Injured	3
Accused	Payton S. Gendron
Charges	First-degree murder (multiple counts)

On May 14, 2022, a mass shooting occurred in Buffalo, New York, at a Tops Friendly Markets store, a supermarket in the Kingsley neighborhood on the eastern side of the city. Ten people were killed, and three others were injured; 11 of the victims were black. The shooter livestreamed the attack on Twitch. The accused, identified as 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron, was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder.

Gendron is reported to have written a manifesto, describing himself as a white supremacist and voicing support for the far-right "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. The attack has been described as an act of domestic terrorism, and the incident is being investigated as racially motivated.

Shooting

At around 2:30 p.m. EDT (UTC−04:00), the shooter arrived at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue, in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. He was wearing body armor, a military grade helmet, carrying a modified Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, and a head-mounted camera, through which he livestreamed the attack on Twitch. In his car, he had a Savage Arms Axis XP hunting rifle and a Mossberg 500 shotgun. As he approached the scene, he was recorded on his livestream saying "just got to go for it". At 2:31 p.m., Buffalo police received a call reporting shots fired at the store. The first responding officers and firefighters arrived a minute later and reported bodies lying outside the building. At 2:34 p.m., a dispatcher started informing responding officers of an active shooter situation at the store.

The shooter shot four people in the parking lot, killing three. He then entered the store, shooting eight more people and killing six. According to a law enforcement source, the shooter yelled racial slurs during the incident. Many employees and customers used the store's break room to hide from the shooter and barricaded the door with a heavy desk to attempt to stop the shooter. Other customers were hidden by employees in the milk cooler section and allege that the shooter shot through the coolers in an attempt to hit those hiding but the milk cartons stopped the bullets. At some point, an armed security guard, former Buffalo Police Department officer Aaron Salter Jr., shot at him. Due to the shooter's body armor, Salter's bullet did not stop him. The shooter returned fire at Salter, who died at the scene. At another point, the shooter aimed his gun at a white person cowering behind a checkout counter but apologized and did not shoot.

By 2:36 p.m., the shooter had gone to the front of the building, where patrol officers were able to talk him into dropping his gun after he reportedly aimed it at his neck. After his arrest, the suspect made disturbing statements regarding his motive and state of mind, a source told CNN.

Victims

Thirteen people – eleven of them black and two white – were shot, ten fatally. The oldest was 86, and the youngest was 20. Four victims were employees of the store, including Salter, who died; the other three survived. All ten who died were black. As of May 15, two of the injured remained hospitalized at Erie County Medical Center in stable condition.

Investigation

Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said the shooting was a "straight up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community". The head of the local FBI office, Stephen Belongia, told reporters that the agency is investigating the shooting as both a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism. Police arrested the shooter and transported him to Buffalo Police Headquarters, with police reporting him to be in custody by about 2:36 p.m. The shooter's parents have cooperated with investigators and were interviewed by federal agents. According to the Buffalo police commissioner, they "uncovered information that if he escaped the supermarket, he had plans to continue his attack".

A separate investigation in connection to the shooting began on May 15, into the conduct of a 911 operator, after allegations were raised of her allegedly hanging up on a supermarket employee who was hiding during the shooting. An assistant manager reportedly called 911 and whispered to avoid detection by the shooter. The employee was then reportedly shouted at by the dispatcher who wondered why the woman was whispering and then allegedly hung up on the employee. The Office of the Erie County Executive announced the dispatcher was placed on administrative leave, pending a disciplinary hearing where termination would be sought.

Accused

The accused, identified in court as Payton S. Gendron, is an 18-year-old white man. Police said that he is not from Buffalo, and that he had traveled for three-and-a-half hours to the supermarket from his hometown of Conklin, about 200 miles (320 km) away. Gendron graduated from Susquehanna Valley High School and was previously enrolled at SUNY Broome Community College in Binghamton. His parents are civil engineers; he previously stated his intention to become one as well, according to his neighbors. Classmates interviewed by The New York Times said he was quiet and rarely attended in-person classes, and he exhibited a range of idiosyncratic behavior, including wearing a hazmat suit to class.

Police said Gendron had been in Buffalo in early March. They also said he was there a day before the shooting and had carried out reconnaissance at the Tops supermarket. The county's district attorney said he had evidence that Gendron was motivated by "racial animosity". According to police, he had researched previous hate-motivated attacks and shootings.

According to a childhood friend of the accused, Gendron came to his house the day before the shooting and left him with five boxes of ammunition. He said he "needed space to rearrange his house" and would retrieve the ammunition later.

Investigation of previous threats

In June 2021, Gendron had been investigated by police in Broome County for threatening other students at his high school. A teacher had asked him about his plans after the school year, and he responded, "I want to murder and commit suicide." He was referred to a hospital for mental health evaluation and counseling, but was released after being held for a day and a half.

Gendron told police that he was joking — he would later write online about how it was a well-executed bluff. He was not charged in connection with the incident; investigators said that he had not made a specific enough threat to warrant further action. The New York State Police did not seek an order from a state court to remove guns from Gendron's possession. The mental health evaluation was not an involuntary commitment, which would have prohibited him from buying guns under federal law.

Weapons

When he purchased the rifle allegedly used during the shooting, a background check was performed as is typically required under U.S. federal law. The seller said that, "He didn't stand out, because if he did, I would have never sold him the gun." He cleared routine background checks while purchasing a shotgun at a gun store in Pennsylvania. According to the store owner, Gendron told them that he wanted the gun for target practice.

On his rifle, he had reportedly written the word nigger and referenced reparations, along with the names of fellow white supremacist mass murderers Dylann Roof, Robert Bowers, Brenton Tarrant, and John Earnest, the acronym SYGAOWN (Stop Your Genocide Against Our White Nations), and the year 2083, a reference to the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik. A law enforcement source told The Daily Beast he had also written on his rifle names of one or more victims of the Waukesha Christmas parade attack. On the weapons in his car which had not been used during the shooting, he reportedly had written "White Lives Matter" and "what appears to be the name of a victim of a crime committed by a Black suspect", according to CNN. Before the shooting, Gendron wrote that he had purchased a rifle and illegally modified it to accept magazines capable of holding up to thirty rounds, which are illegal in New York state, where the limit is ten rounds.

Manifesto

Gendron is reported to have written a 180-page manifesto released prior to the shooting, primarily concerning the topic of mass immigration. The manifesto was originally posted on Google Docs on the evening of May 12, two days before the attack, and according to file data, it had not been modified since. Federal law enforcement sources told CNN that they were reviewing the document, as well as his 673-page online diary.

The manifesto promotes the white nationalist far-right "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory of Renaud Camus, which claims that whites are being subject by elites to genocide through immigration and decreasing white birth rates. The manifesto claims that Jews and the elite are responsible for non-white immigration, that black people disproportionately kill white people, and that non-whites would overwhelm and wipe out the white race. According to the Associated Press, the manifesto "said the attack was intended to terrorize all nonwhite, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country".

It also expressed support for far-right mass shooters Dylann Roof, Anders Behring Breivik, and Brenton Tarrant. About 28 percent of the document is plagiarized from other sources, especially Tarrant's manifesto. As much as 57 percent of the text-based ideological sections were plagiarized in this manner; this was measured by excluding the sections which consisted of Internet meme images, other pictures taken from online, and logistical discussion about the equipment for the attack. The author described himself as an eco-fascist, a white supremacist, national socialist, and an antisemite. He claims to have had adopted these ideological stances after visiting /pol/ on 4chan beginning in May 2020 and seeing "infographics, shitposts, and memes", at around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to 4chan, he also cited The Daily Stormer as having inspired the attack.

The manifesto's author wrote that he started planning the attack in January 2022, and that he targeted Buffalo because it was the city with the most black residents that was closest to his home. The manifesto includes biographical information, including a birth date, which is identical to that of the shooter in custody. It also includes extensive details about preparations made for the shooting, along with a plan to travel to a majority-black neighborhood in Buffalo, after the supermarket attack, to conduct further attacks.

Activity on chat logs

Gendron is also reported to have had an account on the chat platform Discord, with the same username as the Twitch user who livestreamed the attack. Thousands of chat logs were retrieved from the account's postings, which were written in the form of an online diary and range from November 2021 to May 13, 2022. The logs include photos of Gendron. Police said that they believe the messages are genuine. They reference a speeding ticket that is consistent with one received by the accused. He "posted to-do list items in preparation for the attack", according to the Daily Intelligencer. The chat logs indicated the attack was originally planned for March 15, on the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings. They contained indications from as early as November 2021 that he planned to livestream a mass shooting targeting black people. He claimed authorship of a post on 4chan from November 9, 2021, that said, "a brenton tarrant event [sic] will happen again soon".

The online diary also had sketches of the layout inside of the Tops supermarket. The diary mentions visits to the supermarket on March 8. During these visits, he notes being challenged by the security guard, calling it a "close call". He also noted the amount of black people and white people in the supermarket during his visits. The author considered an attack in various locations, including a Walmart in Rochester, New York, before finally deciding to target the Tops supermarket in Buffalo instead. Other locations he considered as targets included churches, malls, and elementary schools with mostly black attendees. He also considered synagogues, but decided against it because March 15 was not on a Saturday. He wrote that he used data available through Google to determine the busiest times in the supermarket.

The author of the online diary described himself as socially isolated. He said, "I would like to say I had quite a normal childhood (<18) but that is not the case". He also said, "It's not that I actually dislike other people, it's just that they make me feel so uncomfortable I've probably spent actual years of my life just being online. And to be honest I regret it. I didn't go to friend's houses often or go to any parties or whatever. Every day after school I would just go home and play games and watch youtube, mostly by my self [sic]." In another entry, he added "If I could go back maybe I'd tell myself to get the fuck off 4chan ... and get an actual life". At one point in the chat logs, the author describes killing and mutilating a cat.

In a post from December 9, 2021, he described staying in the emergency room of a hospital for 20 hours on May 28, 2021, as a result of alluding to his stated intention to commit murder–suicide in an online assignment for his economics class. He described the hospital stay as a very negative experience that encouraged him to take action. In other entries, he posted photos of modifications he made to his rifle so that it could be equipped with 30-round magazines, while acknowledging that this was illegal in New York. He also posted details about obtaining other equipment for a planned attack, such as body armor and a helmet. About 30 minutes before the shooting began, invitations to the chatroom that hosted the online diary logs were sent to a small group of other Discord users. According to a Discord spokesperson, they found no indication that any other users were aware of the diary before that time. He also sent links to the Twitch livestream that would show the attack.

Legal proceedings

Gendron was arraigned in the Buffalo City Court, which is a New York State Court. Represented by a public defender, he entered a not guilty plea to multiple charges of first-degree murder. A felony hearing is scheduled to begin on May 19 in front of a grand jury. He is currently being held without bail under suicide watch. On the same day, the Attorney General of the United States Merrick Garland confirmed that the United States Department of Justice was investigating the shooting "as a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism".

Reactions

National

President Joe Biden offered his prayers for the victims and their families; he called the shooting "a racially motivated hate crime", an "act of domestic terrorism", and went on to call white supremacy a "poison ... running through our body politic". Governor Kathy Hochul traveled to Buffalo to assist with the response. The Erie County Sheriff's Office tweeted their condolences to all of the victims and their families and offered resources and personnel to assist the officers. Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau condemned the attack. Buffalo is on the Canadian border and is adjacent to Fort Erie, Ontario. The mayor of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Jim Diodati called Buffalo mayor Byron Brown to express his solidarity with Buffalo. Flags in Niagara Falls were lowered at half-mast in honor of the victims.

Twitch confirmed that its service was used to broadcast the shooting. It said that the account that posted the livestream had been indefinitely suspended and that any attempts to re-stream the footage would be monitored and prohibited. The shooter's livestream was removed "less than two minutes after the violence started" according to a spokesperson; it was unclear if he was still actively firing at the time. The livestream was recorded by at least one individual and posted to the site Streamable, where it had acquired more than 3 million views by May 15. The spread of the video on other sites has led to discussions about social media sites' liability, responses to similar content, and free speech on the sites.

Publications widely condemned the conspiracy theories, including the notion of white genocide supposedly occurring in the U.S., advocated by the assailant. The Daily Beast journalist Andy Craig has argued that beliefs "centered around the claim that there is a deliberate plot to commit to genocide against white Americans— using non-white immigration as its supposed primary means" created "a noxious brew of ideas" that "animated" the "killer", recommending that all supporters of freedom of speech as an ideal condemn such extremist thinking. The shooter's claim of a Great Replacement has drawn increased scrutiny of Republican political and media figures who have made statements embracing or echoing the conspiracy, most prominently Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik, the third highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, also had attention drawn to her hardline views. The National Review, a conservative news magazine, criticized this scrutiny of Carlson, with columnist Dan McLaughlin saying: "He never mentioned Tucker Carlson, and [he] expressed his hatred for Fox News [in the manifesto]." In response, Carlson said that the suspect's manifesto was "not recognizably left-wing or right-wing; it's not really political at all. The document is crazy".

The prominent attorney for one of the victims' families, Benjamin Crump, has argued that public policy changes need to take place to fight political extremist activism as a result of the shooting. He specifically declared, "We have to direct our attention to these internet sites that inspire these young people that are radicalizing them to be hate-mongers, to be people who hate people because the color of their skin." New York Governor Kathy Hochul stated as well that "we’ll be aggressive in our pursuit of anyone who subscribes to the ideals professed by other white supremacists and how there’s a feeding frenzy on social media platforms where hate festers more hate."

Local community

Dozens of local residents held a vigil at the supermarket the day after the shooting. True Bethel Baptist Church held a mourning service nearby, which was attended by families of the victims and some of those who survived the attack. A moment of silence was held at game one of the 2022 National Lacrosse League playoffs eastern semifinals being held in Buffalo, between the Toronto Rock and Buffalo Bandits, and the proceeds of the 50/50 raffle were donated to the victims' families.

Some of the local black community suggested that, had the shooter been black, he would have been shot by police rather than taken in without incident. Comparisons were made to shootings of unarmed black men, including by the Buffalo police.

See also

• 2019 El Paso shooting, a similar attack targeting Hispanics at a Walmart in 2019
• 2021 Boulder shooting, a similar attack targeting a grocery store
• Halle synagogue shooting, a 2019 attack that was also livestreamed on Twitch
• Charleston church shooting
• Domestic terrorism in the United States
• List of mass shootings in the United States in 2022
• List of right-wing terrorist attacks
• List of shootings in New York (state)
• Timeline of terrorist attacks in the United States
• Lone wolf attack
• White genocide conspiracy theory