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. Read more: At least 10 dead in ‘racially motivated’ shooting at Buffalo supermarket: police “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.