Payton Gendron (18) visited the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo three times on March 8
Buffalo:
The white teen accused of murdering 10 black people in a New York supermarket planned the shooting for months — and surveyed the site in advance, according to social media posts attributed to the suspect.
Payton Gendron (18) visited the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo three times on March 8, then wrote about his intention to commit murder — according to reports he’s allegedly posted on Discord and 4chan, both sites popular with radicals. .
He wrote about how many black and white shoppers were inside and mapped the supermarket aisles, DailyExpertNews and The Washington Post reported.
Gendron posted that on his third trip he was approached by a “black armed guard” who asked him what he was doing going in and out of the store.
The alleged gunman made up an excuse for collecting census data. “In hindsight, that was a close call,” Gendron wrote.
In a post on March 10, Gendron wrote, “I’m going to have to kill that guard at Tops. I hope he doesn’t kill me or even hurt me right away,” DailyExpertNews reported.
Among the victims of Saturday’s shooting was a retired police officer who worked as a security guard. He fired several shots at the attacker before being shot himself, police said.
Gendron first wrote about killing black people in December, and in February decided to target Tops based on the large surrounding African American population, according to the Post, which reviewed more than 600 pages of online posts.
Gendron said he chose Buffalo as the preferred site of his attack because the zip code had a larger black population than other locations he was considering, DailyExpertNews reported.
He reportedly wrote about how he planned to carry out his attack on March 15, but postponed it several times.
The white supremacist, who wears heavy body armor and wields an AR-15 assault rifle, is accused of livestreaming Saturday’s racist frenzy.
He pleaded not guilty to a single count of first degree murder.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
