BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Buffalo Police Department Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia and other local officials are providing an update Monday on Saturday’s mass shooting at the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket.
The livestream will be available to watch in the video player above and a recording of the press conference will be posted afterward.
UPDATE: See previous story below
Law enforcement officials said suspected gunman Payton Gendron, 18, drove 200 miles from his hometown of Conklin, New York, to Buffalo after searching out and specifically targeting a predominantly Black neighborhood.
He shot 11 Black people and two white people at the grocery store, authorities said. Ten people died, all of them Black.
A 180-page document, purportedly written by Gendron, gives plans for the attack and makes references to other racist shootings and to Roof. The document also outlines a racist ideology rooted in a belief that the U.S. should belong only to white people. All others, the document said, were “replacers” who should be eliminated by force or terror. The attack was intended to intimidate all non-white, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country, it said.
The idea that those killed at the Tops Friendly Market lost their lives because of the shooter’s racism is “sick,” said Steve Carlson, 29, who is Black and grew up knowing Katherine Massey, one of the victims.
“It’s not right. You don’t pick what ethnicity you’re born to,” Carlson said. “These people were just shopping, they went to go get food for their families.”
At State Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, Deacon Heyward Patterson was mourned during services Sunday. Pastor Russell Bell couldn’t wrap his mind around the attack and Patterson’s death.
“I don’t understand what that is, to hate people just because of their color, to hate people because we’re different. God made us all different. That’s what makes the world go ’round,” he said.
But as abhorrent as the shooting was, it was hardly an isolated incident. The history of the United States is filled with white supremacist violence, starting from even before its official origins.
Black people have borne and continue to bear the brunt of much of it, but other groups have also been targeted in attacks because of their race, including Latinos in the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where 22 people were killed.
This is a developing story; the Associated Press contributed to this report.