Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron planned to kill more down the street, police say

Police say a man accused of killing 10 people and injuring three others in a Buffalo shooting Saturday planned to kill more people.

Payton Gendron, 18, allegedly drove about 200 miles from his Broome County home in Conklin, N.Y., to target shoppers and workers at a Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Eleven of the 13 shooting victims were Black; among the ten dead were Roberta Drury, 32, a former Cicero-North Syracuse High School student, and Andre “Drew” Mackniel Sr., 53, who lived in Buffalo but has family in Syracuse and Auburn.

Authorities are investigating the attack as a racially-motivated hate crime and are working to confirm the authenticity of a racist, 180-page manifesto allegedly written by Gendron that said he wanted to terrorize all non-white, non-Christian people and get them to leave the U.S. He allegedly referenced “The Great Replacement Theory,” which claims there’s a conspiracy to replace white people through immigration and has been cited in previous mass shootings.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” that Gendron planned to continue his rampage down the street if he wasn’t stopped by officers at the Tops grocery store.

“It appeared that his plans were to drive out of here and continue driving down Jefferson Avenue looking to shoot more Black people as he could and possibly go to another store location,” Gramaglia told “GMA.”

According to NBC, police previously said Sunday that the suspect “did some reconnaissance on the area and in the store,” before the shooting.

The Associated Press reports Gendron was confronted by police in the store’s vestibule when he put a rifle to his neck but was convinced to drop it. He was arraigned later Saturday on a murder charge, appearing before a judge in a paper gown.

Questions have been raised about why more wasn’t done to stop Gendron in the first place. He reportedly threatened to shoot up Susquehanna Valley High School, in Conklin, when he was 17 last year, but was never charged with a crime and had no further contact with law enforcement after his release from a hospital for a mental health evaluation, officials said. He also appeared to be active in online gun communities and posted extremist views, NBC reported.

Gramaglia said Sunday that New York state police and the FBI hadn’t “picked up” anything from the previous threat.

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