A grand jury indicted the 18-year-old man accused of killing 10 Black people in a mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery.
Payton Gendron shot a total of 13 people at a Tops store in Buffalo on May 14. He was charged with multiple crimes related to the shooting in a 25-count indictment on Wednesday (June 1).
The charges include 10 counts of murder in the first degree, 10 counts of murder in the second degree as a hate crime, three counts of attempted murder in the second degree as a hate crime, domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, an armed felony.
Gendron, who is white, targeted the Tops grocery due to its location in a predominantly Black neighborhood. He visited the store a few months before the deadly shooting.
The shooter drove to Buffalo – hours away from his Conklin, New York home – because it was the closest city with a large Black population. His alleged manifesto referenced the “replacement theory,” which is a racist conspiracy.
Benny The Butcher, a Buffalo native, spoke about the shooting during a May 27 appearance on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber. The Griselda rapper noted his child felt traumatized by the hometown massacre and the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
“People are afraid to go to the grocery stores,” Benny told Melber. “My daughter hasn’t been going to school since that happened. So, it’s like, that’s the last thing we need (the Uvalde shooting). We got to find a way to protect ourselves and situations like that.”
A gunman shot and killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde on May 24. Law enforcement killed the 18-year-old shooter, whose name was Salvador Ramos.
