Michael R. Sisak, Associated Press Published on Wednesday, May 18, 2022, 5:52 PM EDT Last Updated: Wednesday, May 18, 2022, 6:56 PM EDT
Shortly before he opened fire, a white gunman accused of killing 10 blacks at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, allowed a small group of people to see his detailed plans for the attack, which he had written for months in a private online diary. .
Discord, the chat platform where 18-year-old Peyton Hendron kept the diary, confirmed on Wednesday that an invitation to access his personal writings had been sent to the group about half an hour before Saturday’s attack on Tops Friendly Market, which he broadcast live on another online service. Some of them accepted.
Hendron’s diary and his racist, anti-Semitic records from last November include step-by-step descriptions of his plans for the attack, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made to Buffalo in March, and maps of the shop he drew by hand.
“What we know at the moment is that the suspect set up a private server with invitations only to serve as a personal chat diary,” a Discord spokesman said in a written statement. “Approximately 30 minutes before the attack, however, a small group of people were invited and joined the server. Previously, our records showed that no one else had seen the chat log on this private server.
It was unclear whether any of the people who had access to Gendron’s diary or watched his live broadcast did anything to warn authorities or try to stop the attack. Discord said it removed Gendron’s diary as soon as the platform learned about it, in line with the company’s policies against violent extremism.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramagia said Monday that investigators are working to obtain, verify and review Gendron’s online publications.
Copies of his Discord diary – essentially a transcript of his publications in his personal chat diary – briefly appeared elsewhere online after the shooting, along with a 180-page putty attributed to him. Both were riddled with beliefs about white supremacy, reflecting an unfounded extremist conspiracy theory to conspire to reduce white influence.
President Joe Biden, who visited Buffalo on Tuesday, dismissed such beliefs, saying: “Now is the time for people of all races, of all backgrounds, to speak as the majority … and reject the superiority of white.
Gendron was charged over the weekend with murder charges; on his behalf he was found not guilty and he remained in prison under suicide supervision. He is due to appear in court in Buffalo again on Thursday.
Technology companies such as Discord and Twitch, which authorities say Gendron used live to attack the supermarket, are being monitored for their role as hate speech vectors.
New York Gov. Katie Hochul on Wednesday authorized Attorney General Leticia James to investigate the social media platforms used by Gendron to determine whether they have “civil or criminal liability” for their role in promoting, facilitating or providing a planning platform. and encourage violence. “
Discord said it plans to cooperate with the James investigation and continues to assist law enforcement in the ongoing investigation into the shooting.
“Our deepest sympathies are with the victims and their families,” the company said. “Hate has no place in Discord and we are committed to fighting violence and extremism.”
Messages seeking comment were left with Twitch. Twitch CEO Emmett Sheare told the Harvard Business Review in an interview earlier Wednesday that the Amazon-owned platform will continue to “invest heavily in ensuring the safety of everyone at Twitch.”
“I think this is an example of one of those places where we’ve done a lot of work, but there’s obviously still work to be done,” Sheare said.
Attempts to reach representatives of two other technology platforms that James is investigating, 8kun and 4chan, were unsuccessful. Hendron writes in his diary that these boards were where he began reading about the racist ideologies that led him on the path to killing non-white, non-Christians.
When asked for comment, Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of 8kun and his predecessor, 8chan, said he withdrew from the organization last year and “has no idea what’s going on.”
Gendron writes in his diary at Discord that he started reading 4chan a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and that he was heavily influenced by Brenton Tarant, who killed 51 people in a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. in 2019. Gendron wrote that he originally planned his attack for March 15, the three-year anniversary of Tarrant’s attack.
Copies of Gendron’s diary were shared with the Associated Press by Marc-Andre Argentino, a research fellow at the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence. He said it was possible, but it was unlikely that the diary had been altered by anyone other than the author.
Hendron, in the diary, said he specifically targeted a store with mostly black customers, exploring locations in Rochester, Syracuse and Long Island before stopping at Buffalo. Prosecutors say he showed up on Saturday wearing a bulletproof vest and an AR-15 rifle while a helmet-mounted camera aired on the Internet.
Problems with his weapon and a subsequent collision with COVID-19 – which he speculated had infected with a fast-food chicken sandwich poisoned by government agents – prevented him from attacking earlier, the diary said.
Gendron writes that he began thinking about a “personal attack on the deputies” a few weeks before an episode in high school about a year ago. This episode led to him being taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
A few weeks before the attack, Hendron wrote that neither his parents nor his brothers were aware of his plans, but feared they would find out.
Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Hallelujah Hadero in New York, Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, contributed to the report.
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