On Saturday, an 18-year-old white shooter opened fire at a grocery store in a Black area in upstate New York, killing ten people and wounding three others before surrendering in what officials described as an act of “racially motivated violent extremism.”

Authorities said the suspect, who was armed with an assault-style rifle and appeared to be acting alone, drove several hours to Buffalo from his residence to carry out the afternoon attack, which he broadcast live on Twitch, an Amazon.com-owned live streaming site (AMZN.O).

Officials say 11 of the 13 victims killed by gunshots were black. The other two were white. The racial makeup of the deceased was not revealed.

Payton Gendron of Conklin, a community of about 5,000 people in New York’s Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, was listed as the suspect in court papers.

According to Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, he was arraigned in state court hours after the shooting on first-degree murder charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. New York does not have a death penalty.

The judge also ordered Gendron to remain in detention without bail and submit to a “forensic examination,” according to Flynn. On May 19, Gendron was set to return to court.

POLICE SURRENDERED
Authorities claimed the boy, who was a student at the State University of New York’s Broome Community College near Binghamton, had come dangerously close to killing himself before being apprehended.

The man had a revolver to his neck when contacted by authorities at the store, but they coaxed him into dropping the weapon and surrendering, according to Buffalo police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia.

According to Gramaglia, the gunman shot and murdered three individuals in the Tops Friendly Markets parking lot before exchanging fire with a retired police officer serving as a security guard for the store, but the suspect was protected by his body armour.

The guard was one of ten persons killed in the shooting, the other nine being clients. Three additional employees of the regional chain store were injured but are likely to live, according to authorities.

Shonnell Harris, a Tops manager, told the Buffalo News that she heard up to 70 bullets and tripped multiple times while running through the shop to a back exit.

She described the camouflage-clad assailant to the newspaper as “looking like he was in the army.”

Katherine Crofton, a retired firefighter who lives close, said she saw the bloodshed begin from her porch.

Crofton told the publication, “I watched him shoot this woman.” “She had just entered the store. He then shot a third woman. She was loading groceries into her car at the time. I knelt because I was afraid he was going to shoot me.”

‘EVIL PURE’

Under federal law, the attack will be investigated as a hate crime and as an act of “racially motivated violent extremism,” according to FBI special agent in charge of the Buffalo field office Stephen Belongia.

At a press conference, Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said, his voice trembling with passion, “This person was pure evil.” “It was a racially motivated hate crime perpetrated by someone from outside our community.”

In a statement released late Saturday, US President Biden called the massacre “abhorrent to the fundamental fibre of this nation.” “Hate must be denied a safe haven. We must do everything possible to put an end to domestic terrorism motivated by hatred.”

Governor Kathy Hochul of New York expressed her dismay at the killer’s ability to live-stream his attack on social media, which she blamed for fostering a “feeding frenzy” of violent extremist ideology.

“It’s really astounding that that could ever be uploaded on a platform,” Hochul remarked. “These channels need to be more on top of social media material.”

Twitch said in a statement that the livestream was taken down less than two minutes after it began and that it was working to ensure no further incidents occurred.

Social media users shared screenshots of the broadcast, including one that looked to show the gunman carrying a rifle and standing over a body in the supermarket.

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Cleaning the pistol and testing the livestream were on a to-do list for the attack, according to a document circulating online that purported to have been written by the assassin.

A 180-page manifesto explaining ‘The Great Replacement Theory,’ which claims that white people are being replaced by minorities in the United States and other countries, circulated online as well.

Flynn’s office declined to comment on the materials through a spokeswoman. The FBI could not be reached for comment right away.

On Tuesday, the governor said she would propose a previously planned “comprehensive” gun control bill to “address further flaws in our (state) legislation.”

Hochul said that the gun used in the killings was legally purchased but had been illegally modified with a high-capacity magazine, which she claimed could have been easily purchased legally in Pennsylvania.

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

Saturday’s shooting spree was also eerily similar to the mosque assault in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, in which the gunman live-streamed the attack.

On what he described as a “day of immense sadness for our community,” Buffalo Mayor Bryon Brown appealed for unity.

He told reporters, “Several of us have gone in and out of this supermarket many times.” “We cannot allow this terrible individual to tear our community and country apart.”