Last spring, as the academic year drew to a close at Susquehanna Valley High School outside of Binghamton, NY, students were asked for a school project about their plans after graduation.
Payton Gendron, a senior, said he intended to commit a murder-suicide, according to a law enforcement officer who was briefed on the matter.
He claimed to be joking, the official said. But state police were called to investigate and took Mr Gendron, then 17, into custody on June 8 under a state mental health law, police officials said Sunday.
He had a psychiatric evaluation at a hospital but was released within a few days, officials said. Two weeks later, Mr. Gendron graduated and fell off the investigators’ radar.
On Saturday, he turned up 200 miles away in Buffalo, where authorities say he opened fire on a supermarket in a predominantly black area, killing 10 people and injuring three others in one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent history. the United States.
After his frenzy, Mr. Gendron put his gun to his neck. But two officers persuaded him to drop his weapon and surrender.
He was charged with first-degree murder on Saturday, and while he awaited his fate in prison, investigators were scouring his past to summarize how he went from being a silent student to an accused murderer without taking a more serious investigation.
New York state has a so-called red flag law that would force people who appear to be a threat to surrender their weapons, but no one tried to invoke it against Mr. Gendron. State police said he had not identified a specific target in his threat to kill anyone.
But the episode came after what former classmates said was a pattern of Mr. Gendron’s increasingly bizarre behavior. Two former classmates said he came to class in hazmat gear after pandemic restrictions were lifted in 2020.
“He wore the whole suit, boots, gloves, everything,” said Nathan Twitchell, 19, as he stood on his porch in Binghamton, shaking his head. “Everyone was just staring at him.”
That was one of the few times students saw Mr. Gendron, said Cassaudra Williams, another high school student. Ms. Williams, 19, said Mr. Gendron preferred online courses even as his classmates returned to campus.
“He was always very quiet and never said much,” said Mrs. Williams, adding that Mr. Gendron was “book wise” but had become more withdrawn over the years since meeting him in grade school.
“We were just so shocked. We can’t even turn our heads around it,” she said.
FBI agents and other law enforcement officers gathered Sunday morning outside Mr. Gendron’s home in Conklin, a city of about 5,000.
There was little movement in the light-blue two-story house with black shutters and neatly trimmed shrubs, except for officers walking in the driveway. Three neighbors stood close together in the block, arms folded. Some remembered watching Mr. Gendron play basketball in the driveway with his two brothers, and some even attended his graduation party in the front yard last year.
Mr. Gendron’s mother did not respond to a message on Sunday afternoon. Nor did the attorney representing Mr. Gendron represented Brian Parker at his arraignment.
Mrs. Williams said the last time she saw Mr. Gendron during graduation. She said she was shocked when a friend texted her after the shooting on Saturday to tell her that Mr. Gendron had been arrested.
“He was just a quiet, smart kid who I wouldn’t think could do anything like what he did yesterday,” Mr. Twitchell said. “It just comes to mind.”
Kolton Gardner, 18, who attended middle and high school with Mr. Gendron, described him as “absolutely a bit of an outcast.”
“He just wasn’t that sociable,” Mr. Gardner said. “I knew he was interested in guns, but it wasn’t uncommon where we grew up. That’s just the way it is in rural New York, people like guns.”
Mr. Gendron’s fascination with guns went beyond the ordinary. Law enforcement officers said he plotted the attack over several months and posted a 180-page manifesto online explaining why he committed the shootings and detailing his painstaking preparations. In it, he wrote extensively about the pros and cons of various firearms.
The document includes a question-and-answer section, graphs of data that give it a pseudoscientific aura, and pages of racist and anti-Semitic memes — as well as his thoughts on cryptocurrency.
He wrote of his admiration for past mass murderers and said he was particularly inspired by the man responsible for a 2019 mosque massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand.
One of the many unanswered questions that Mr. Gendron has raised is why his grim reaction about his plans after graduation didn’t lead to further intervention beyond the mental health exam.
Under the New York state red flag law enacted in 2019, anyone who believes someone could be a threat to themselves or others can ask a judge to issue an “extreme risk protection order” that prevents the person from carrying a firearm. buy or own. The law is not often used.
The law enforcement officer briefed on the school project said hundreds of school threats come in every year in New York, and authorities are interviewing the students and their parents in each case to determine whether the students actually have access to guns. The authorities then try to make a reasoned phone call.
Anyway, Mr. Gendron was not on a red flag list when he walked into Vintage Firearms in Endicott, NY, and bought the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that police say he used in the shooting.
Robert Donald, the owner of the shop, confirmed that his records showed he had sold the gun to Mr Gendron, but said he could not remember the young man at all, even though he said he only had about six of them. sells. this type of weapon in a year.
Mr. Donald, 75, who has owned the store since 1993 and primarily sells collectible firearms, said he was shocked when federal investigators contacted him on Saturday to inquire about Mr Gendron, who Mr. Donald said had been carrying the gun in the past few months. had bought. †
mr. Donald said he was doing background checks on Mr. Gendron before selling him the weapon. The report showed nothing. “He didn’t stand out, because if he did, I would never have sold him the gun,” said Mr. Donald.
Mr. Gendron wrote that he modified the gun with his father’s drill, using a parts kit that retails for $60. Mr. Donald said that when he sold Mr. Gendron the firearm, the design was consistent with the state law forbidding military features.
“Even with all those safety features on it — and that’s the only way I sell it — any weapon can be easily modified if you really want to do it,” he said.
Christine Chung† Luke Vander Ploeg and Mark Walker reporting contributed.
