Buffalo shooter planned to ‘shoot more Black people’ after attack on store: police
Buffalo, N.Y., Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia on Monday said that the alleged perpetrator of the mass shooting on Saturday planned to “shoot more Black people” after killing 10 people and injuring three more at a local grocery store.
“It appeared that his plans were to drive out of here and then continue driving down Jefferson Avenue looking to shoot more ‘Black people,’ as he put it, and possibly even go to another store location,” Gramaglia told ABC News.
In a press conference, Gramaglia said of the shooting at Tops Friendly Market: “This is an absolute racist hate crime. This is someone who has hate in their heart and soul and mind.”
Accused shooter Payton Gendron, who allegedly drove from a town 200 miles away to perpetrate the hate crime, had apparently been influenced by the racist “great replacement theory,” a baseless conspiracy theory that politicians are attempting to replace white people with nonwhites.
Gendron, an 18-year-old white man, livestreamed the attack on the Buffalo grocery store.
A Tops employee told ABC that Gendron was asked to leave a day prior to the shooting after being found loitering around the store in a camouflage uniform.
“This is the worst nightmare that any community can face, and we are hurting and we are seething right now,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said at a news conference on Sunday. “The depth of pain that families are feeling and that all of us are feeling right now cannot even be explained.”
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