Criminal Law
Online Posts Show That the Buffalo Supermarket Shooting Suspect Had Been Planning For Months
Social media posts by the 18-year-old White man suspected of shooting and killing 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket Saturday reveal he had been planning his attack for months.
Alleged gunman Payton S. Gendron of Conklin, New York, posted that he selected a particular ZIP code in Buffalo because it had the highest percentage of a Black population close enough to where he lived. Police and other officials have described the mass shooting as a hate crime.
In his posts, initially written on the chat app Discord and shared on online forum 4chan, the suspect said he visited the Tops Friendly Market three times on March 8 to survey the layout as well as at the times of the day when there were the most customers. He planned his attack for mid-March, the posts say, but delayed the date several times.
