By Artemis Moshtaghian, Emma Tucker and Shimon Prokupecz, CNN
Ten people were killed in a racially motivated mass shooting at a supermarket in buffalo Saturday by a suspect in tactical gear who was livestreaming the attack, law enforcement officials said during a news conference.
The shooting happened Saturday afternoon at a Tops Friendly Markets store. The suspect in the shooting, a white male, is in custody, police said. He was identified as Payton Gendron, 18, and has pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge filed against him in court Saturday night, the chief judge of the Buffalo city court told CNN. Craig Hannah.
Thirteen were shot in the attack and 10 have died. Of those shot, 11 were black and two were white, authorities said. Two people remain hospitalized in stable condition, a spokesperson for the Erie County Medical Center told CNN.
Saturday’s massacre in Buffalo is the latest high-profile mass shooting in which authorities have said the suspect was motivated by hate, including attacks on a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; the Synagogue Tree of Life in Pittsburgh; Emanuel African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Charleston and the disco pulse in orlando
The US Department of Justice is investigating the mass shooting “as a hate crime and a racially motivated act of violent extremism,” according to a statement from US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“The Department of Justice is committed to conducting a thorough and expeditious investigation into this shooting and to seeking justice for these innocent victims,” the statement said.
The FBI is assisting in the investigation, Stephen Belongia, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo field office, said at the news conference.
The suspect drove all the way to Buffalo to Tops Market heavily armed, in tactical gear and had a camera where he was livestreaming what he was doing, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said.
Investigators are reviewing an alleged manifesto posted online in connection with the mass shooting, two federal law enforcement officials told CNN.
Live Updates: Buffalo Supermarket Mass Shooting
‘This is the worst nightmare’
CNN obtained a portion of the live feed taken from the shooter’s point of view as he drove into the supermarket parking lot. The shooter, seen in the rearview mirror wearing a helmet, is heard saying, “I have to go get him” before stopping in front of the store.
In the video, customers of the store can be seen walking through the parking lot as the suspect approaches.
The suspect then shot four people in the store’s parking lot, Gramaglia said. Three of those individuals died and one survived, Gramaglia said.
He then entered the market and began shooting customers in the store, Gramaglia said.
A supermarket security guard, a retired Buffalo police officer, “fired multiple shots at the suspect,” but the suspect’s tactical gear protected him from the officer’s gunfire, Gramaglia said.
The suspect fatally shot the security officer and continued through the supermarket, working toward the front of the store, where he was met by Buffalo police officers.
The suspect put his gun to his neck, at which point two Buffalo officers convinced him to drop his gun and then removed some of their tactical gear and turned themselves in to police, authorities said. Police arrested the suspect and transported him to Buffalo Police Headquarters.
“This is the worst nightmare any community can face, and we are hurting and we are angry right now as a community,” said Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. “The depth of pain that families are feeling and that all of us are feeling right now cannot even be explained.”
Tops Friendly Markets released a statement after the shooting, saying it is “shocked and deeply saddened.”
“We appreciate the quick response from local law enforcement and are providing all available resources to assist authorities in the ongoing investigation,” the statement said.
Twitch, the popular live streaming platform best known for gaming, confirmed on Saturday that the suspect had used its platform to stream a live stream during the attack. The suspect has been “indefinitely suspended” from the platform. A Twitch spokesperson said the company removed the live stream less than two minutes after the violence began.
Buffalo joins growing list of hate-fueled shootings
The Tops supermarket targeted in Saturday’s attack is located near the Masten Park and Kingsley areas in the heart of Buffalo’s black community.
The supermarket is about two blocks from the public library named after Frank Elliott Merriweather Jr., the former editor of the Buffalo Criterion, a black newspaper. And it’s about a half mile from the Buffalo Black Achievers Museum.
“Now you have a white assailant in a (majority) black community. Why did you choose this market? said CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem.
“There are two aspects to the first-degree murder charge that could potentially be charged here,” Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said at a news conference Saturday afternoon.
One factor, he explained, is when multiple people are shot or killed. The other is when there is a racial component to the case.
The district attorney said his office is looking to make sure it has the best charge against the suspect, but “from a state standpoint, it’s life without parole and that’s as high as we can go.”
Saturday’s shooting adds to the list of hate-fueled violence in the United States in recent years. And it marks another incident in the growing number of mass shootings in the United States, which stood at 197 per year as of Saturday afternoon, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive and CNN define a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.
Experts consider easy access to guns to be a leading cause of violence, and open-carry states lower the barrier for people to own and carry guns in public. But the rise in violence since the summer of 2020 has been across the board, in cities and states with lax and strict gun laws, progressive and conservative prosecutors, as well as Republican and Democratic mayors and governors.
Among other recent attacks, authorities say they were motivated by hate:
— In August 2019, police say a man killed 22 people and injured nearly two dozen more in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas.
The rampage was the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern US history.
Patrick Crusius was charged with killing and harming victims “because of any person’s actual and perceived national origin,” the indictment says. He pleaded not guilty and has not yet been tried.
— In October 2018, 11 worshipers were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
Federal prosecutors filed hate crime charges against Robert Bowers, alleging he used anti-Semitic slurs and criticized a Jewish group on a social media site in the days before the shooting.
Bowers in 2019 pleaded not guilty. He is yet to be judged.
Federal prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty on charges including obstruction of the free exercise of religious belief resulting in death, use and discharge of a firearm to commit murder, and possession of a firearm during a violent crime. .
— In June 2016, a US-born man who had sworn allegiance to ISIS shot dead 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
The gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Florida, was carrying an assault rifle and handgun at the Pulse club around 2 a.m. on June 12, 2016, and began shooting, killing 49 people, they said. The authorities.
Mateen, who was killed in a shootout with police the day of the massacre, was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 but did not turn out to be a threat, the FBI said.
— In June 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof shot dead nine African-American worshipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Roof was convicted of federal charges and sentenced to death in January 2017. He was the first federal hate crime defendant to be sentenced to death, a Justice Department spokesman said.
— In August 2012, another place of worship was the scene of a mass shooting. A gunman opened fire at a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, during prayer services, killing six and wounding four. Wade Michael Page died of a self-inflicted wound, the FBI said.
Then-Attorney General Eric Holder called the attack “an act of terrorism, an act of hate, a hate crime.”
According to a man who described himself as an old friend of Page’s in the military, the shooter spoke about “racial holy war” when they served together in the 1990s.
The CNN Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Sabrina Shulman, Phil Gast, Brian Stelter, Christina Maxouris and Peter Nickeas contributed to this report.
Reference-kion546.com