By Tyler Clifford
BUFFALO, N.Y. (Reuters) – The teenager accused of killing 10 people in a live-streamed supermarket shooting in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, was due back in court on Thursday in a case spurring a national conversation about the toxic mix of guns, hate and the internet.
Payton Gendron, 18, who is white, was initially arraigned on a single count of first-degree murder hours after police said he opened fire on Saturday afternoon at a Tops Friendly Markets outlet with a semi-automatic assault-style rifle.
He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bond.
Thirteen people were struck by gunfire, most of them Black, and 11 of the victims died, before the gunman surrendered to police confronting him inside the grocery store.
The FBI immediately said it was investigating the rampage as a hate crime and an act of “racially motivated violent extremism,” and authorities have pointed to a white supremacist manifesto he is suspected of posting online before the shooting.
Gendron, from the small southern New York town of Conklin, near the Pennsylvania border, was scheduled to appear for a second Erie County court proceeding – referred to as a felony hearing – on Thursday morning.
It was not clear whether he would immediately face additional state charges. First-degree murder in New York state carries a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.
President Joe Biden, in a visit to Buffalo on Tuesday, condemned white nationalists, as well as online platforms, media outlets and political rhetoric he criticized for spreading racist conspiracy theories.
“What happened here is simple and straightforward – terrorism, terrorism, domestic terrorism,” Biden said.
New York state Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday opened an investigation into several social media platforms she said the Buffalo grocery store gunman used to plan, promote and broadcast the attack.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced additional measures aimed at curbing domestic terrorism, including legislation to tighten New York gun laws and a directive for state police to exercise their authority to disarm individuals deemed a public threat under the state’s red-flag law.
She accused social media sites of allowing violent extremism to flourish, and said the Buffalo shooting reflected an intersection between “the mainstreaming of hate speech … and the easy access to military-style weapons.”
Gendron is accused of having webcast video of the attack he was committing in real time onto Twitch, a live video platform owned by Amazon.com.
While Twitch said it took down the video within two minutes, screenshots from the broadcast circulated on social media through the day. And footage of the livestream could still be found on the internet as recently as Wednesday morning.
Authorities said the suspect also is believed to have posted a lengthy racist screed online outlining the “great replacement theory” – the idea that minorities are replacing white people in the United States and other countries – as well as a check list and journal of his attack preparations.
Buffalo police said Gendron first came to the attention of local law enforcement nearly a year before the Buffalo shooting, when police detained him after he made a threat at his high school, and that he was released after a mental health exam.
Hochul said the murder weapon was purchased legally, but modified with a high-capacity magazine that is outlawed in New York.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in Buffalo, New York; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Bradley Perrett)
