Buffalo shooter dropped off ammo at childhood friend’s home before driving 200 miles to Tops supermarket
The 18-year-old gunman who allegedly massacred 10 people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., dropped ammo off at his best friend’s home before driving 200 miles to the scene.
That friend, Matthew Casado, told ABC News that he has known suspect Payton Gendron since the second grade and that they had graduated high school together the year before.
Gendron brought five boxes of ammunition by Casado’s home, showing up unannounced at about 8 a.m. on Friday, the day before allegedly committing the mass shooting, and was let in by one of Casado’s roommates. Casado was working, and Gendron texted his friend hours later, at 4:30 p.m., to say that he had “put ammo cans in my room because he needed space to arrange in his house,” Casado told ABC News.
He said he would pick them up at about 7:30 but never came back, Casado told the outlet. Once they heard about the shooting, Casado’s family called authorities, who came and collected the boxes.
Casado and his family expressed shock that this person who they knew as quiet and studious could do such a thing.
“Up until Saturday when I got the news, I always thought he was a kind harmless person,” said Casado.“He never stuck out to me as dangerous. He never stuck out to me as racist.”
That stood in contrast to a boy who had seemed out of place in recent years, as classmates described Gendron to The Associated Press. Even Casado characterized his friend as “nerdy.”
Gendron had shown up at school on the first in-person day post-lockdown last year clad head to toe in hazmat attire, AP said, a stunt that Casado deemed a “harmless joke” but that did not sit well with classmates.
“Most people didn’t associate with him,” Casado told AP. “They didn’t want to be known as friends with a kid who was socially awkward and nerdy.”
Casado’s mother, Pamela Burdock, told ABC News that Gendron was like a son to her and that he did not play violent video games prohibited by his parents, even when he could have while at her home. She could not square away the teen she knew with the person who had allegedly researched a community specifically to unleash terror against Black people.
“I love Payton. He was like my other child,” Burdock told ABC News. “I never had a problem with him. He was always respectful. He was nice to me … It’s breaking my heart that he did this.”
With News Wire Services
