Gun shop owner who sold Bushmaster XM-15 to Buffalo shooting suspect said background check showed nothing amiss
The gun shop owner who sold the Bushmaster XM-15 to the 18-year-old accused of killing 10 people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., said his customer had passed a background check and raised no red flags.
“I just can’t believe it. I don’t understand why an 18-year-old would even do this,” Robert Donald, owner of Vintage Firearms in Endicott, N.Y., told The New York Times on Sunday. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but I feel terrible about it.”
The 75-year-old has owned the shop nearly 30 years, selling mostly collectible firearms. He told The Times that he was shocked to hear from federal authorities and then received a visit from two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents about the murderous rampage by Payton Gendron in a Tops supermarket on Saturday.
“I knew nothing about it until I got the call from them,” he told the newspaper. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The agents took paperwork documenting the purchase, The Times said. Donald said he only sells about a half dozen assault weapons annually, and even so, Gendron did not make an impression.
“He didn’t stand out — because if he did, I would’ve never sold him the gun,” Donald told The Times.
Gendron later modified the used semiautomatic rifle illegally so it could accommodate a high-capacity magazine, The Washington Post reported.
The white teen was blatant about the racist nature of his crime, according to a manifesto posted in his name. He streamed the shooting on the social media site Twitch before it was taken down, officials said.
“This was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said at a press conference. “It was straight-up racially motivated.”
Arrested at the scene, Gendron is being held without bail.
