Buffalo, New York –
A white gunman accused of massacring 10 blacks at a Buffalo supermarket wrote back in November about a live attack on African Americans, practiced shooting from his car and traveled hours from home in March to investigate the store, according to details. . diary entries that appear to have been published online.
The author of the diary published hand-drawn maps of the grocery store, along with bills of the number of black people he counted there, and described how the black security guard at the supermarket confronted him that day to ask him what he was doing. A black security guard was among those killed in Saturday’s shooting.
The diary, taken from the Discord chat platform, came to light two days after 18-year-old Peyton Hendron opened fire with an AR-15 rifle at Tops Friendly Market. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and used a helmet camera to broadcast the bloodbath live online, authorities said.
He turned himself in at the supermarket and was charged with murder over the weekend. He pleaded not guilty and was jailed for suicide. Federal authorities are considering hate crimes.
Copies of the online materials were shared with the Associated Press by Marc-Andre Argentino, a research associate at the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence.
A transcript of the diary entries was apparently made public sometime before the attack. It was unclear how many people may have seen the recordings. Experts said it was possible, but it is unlikely that the diary was altered by anyone other than the author.
Buffalo’s top FBI agent, Stephen Belongia, told other officials Monday that investigators were reviewing Gendron Discord’s activities, citing publications last summer about bulletproof vests and weapons and others last month mocking federal officials. . Belongia did not give details in the conversation, the recording of which was given to the AP.
But in a April 17 post, apparently by Gendron, he urged readers to kill FBI agents and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Messages for comment were left to Gendron’s lawyers. No one opened the door to his family home.
The violence spread grief and anger inside and outside Buffalo.
Former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr., who lost his 86-year-old mother Ruth Whitfield in the shooting, asked how the country could allow a story of racist killings to repeat itself.
“We’re not just hurting. We’re angry,” Whitfield told a news conference with civil rights lawyer Ben Crump and others. “We treat people with decency and even love our enemies.”
“And you expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again – forgive and forget again,” he continued. “While the people we elect and trust in the services in this country are doing everything possible not to protect us, not to consider us equal.
The victims also include a man who buys a cake for his grandson; a church deacon who helps people go home with their groceries; and supermarket security.
The online diary describes a March 8 reconnaissance visit to Buffalo, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Hendron’s home in Conklin, New York.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramagia told a news conference that there was information that Hendron was in Buffalo in March, but Gramagia declined to say more.
The commissioner said many investigators were working to obtain and review Gendron’s online publications.
“There are a lot of social ones that are being looked at or checked, caught,” Gramagia said. “Some of this requires orders to be served on various social media platforms.”
The author of the diary spoke about checking targets, including Tops Friendly Market, and said a security guard asked him what he was doing after his second visit of the day. He apologized for the data collection and soon left – “a close call”, he wrote.
A 180-page document allegedly written by Gendron says the attack was aimed at terrorizing all non-Christians, non-Christians and forcing them to leave the country. Federal authorities said they were working to verify the authenticity of the document.
Hendron was briefly on the radar of the authorities last spring when the state police were called to his high school for a report that the 17-year-old had made threatening statements at the time.
Belongia, an FBI agent, said Hendron had answered a question about future plans, saying he wanted to commit suicide.
A December publication in Discord, which Gendron apparently made, said he had given that answer to a question about retirement in economics class and ended up spending “one of the worst nights of my life” in hospital.
Gramagia said Hendron had no more contact with law enforcement after a mental health assessment that put him in hospital for a day and a half. Speaking to Belongia, Gramagia said the state police were “doing everything within the law” at the time.
It was unclear whether officials could rely on New York’s Red Flag Ordinance, which allows law enforcement, school officials and families to ask the court to order the seizure of weapons by people considered dangerous.
Federal law prohibits people from possessing weapons if a judge determines that they have a “mental defect” or have been forced into a psychiatric facility. The assessment alone would not trigger the ban.
At the White House, President Joe Biden, who plans to visit Buffalo on Tuesday, paid tribute to the slain security guard, retired police officer Aaron Salter.
Salter fired repeatedly at the attacker, hitting his bulletproof vest at least once before being shot and killed. Biden said Salter “gave his life trying to save others.”
Authorities said that in addition to the 10 blacks killed, three people were injured: one black and two white.
Zeneta Everhart said her son, supermarket employee Zaire Goodman, was helping an outside shopper when he saw a man get out of a car with military equipment and point a gun at him. Then a bullet hit Goodman in the neck.
“Mom! Mom, come now, come now! I was shot!” told his mother on the phone. Goodman, 20, has been released from hospital and is feeling well on Monday, his mother said.
In a live online video of the attack, the shooter aimed his weapon at a white man who was curled up behind the cash register, but said, “I’m sorry!” And did not fire. The screenshots allegedly from the show appear to show racial insults against blacks scratched on his rifle.
Associated Press reporters Karen Matthews and Jennifer Peltz in New York; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Robert Bumstead in Buffalo; and Michael Hill in Conklin contributed to this report. Balsamo reported from Washington.
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