Buffalo supermarket shooter was radicalized by New Zealand mosque killer
The man accused of killing 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo on Saturday was influenced by a New Zealand white supremacist who murdered dozens of people in a pair of shootings three years ago, according to a 180-page manifesto posted online.
Payton Gendron, 18, wrote a terrifyingly cold “questions and answers” section in the manifesto that spelled out the white nationalist beliefs that he said led him to plot the Buffalo attack.
He said the “particular person that radicalized (him) the most” was Brenton Tarrant, the man who murdered 51 people in shootings at two New Zealand mosques in 2019.
The manifesto also named several other people who inspired Gendron, including Dylann Roof, the young man who killed nine Black people at a church in South Carolina in 2015, and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian man who killed 77 people in 2011.
In the manifesto, Gendron said he lived his entire life in Southern New York. He described himself as an engineering student at SUNY Broome.
The college confirmed to the Buffalo News that Gendron was previously a student there, but said he was no longer enrolled. It did not provide details about when he was a student or why he left.
Police said the killer drove from “hours away” to carry out the attack. Gendron is reported to live in Conklin, N.Y., about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Buffalo.
“The truth is my personal life and experiences are of no value,” read the manifesto. Gendron wrote that he got his white nationalist ideology “mostly from the internet” and that there was “little to no influence on my personal beliefs by people I met in person.”
The chilling document described how Gendron planned the attack to the tiniest detail.
“Zip code 14208 in Buffalo (the zip code for Tops Friendly Market) has the highest Black percentage that is close enough to where I live,” Gendron wrote.
He also said he bought body armor to protect himself from bullets fired by security at the store. Police leaders said Gendron gunned down the security guard, a retired Buffalo police officer, before continuing his rampage.
Gendron’s manifesto also included pages and pages of anti-Semitic rants — but his attack plan focused solely on Black people.
“I was never diagnosed with a mental disability or disorder,” he wrote. “I believe to be perfectly sane.”
Gendron was arrested at the Tops Friendly Market after he shot 13 people, killing 10 of them. Of the 13 he shot, 11 were Black, police said. He was charged with murder, and investigators said he could face terrorism and hate crime charges.
