The investigation into the weekend’s shooting at a supermarket in western New York will begin Monday to see if authorities missed the warning signs and red flags left by the young attacker before his racist murder.
Authorities said Payton Gendron, 18, committed an act of “racially motivated violent extremism” when he opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo on Saturday, and 11 of the 13 people killed were black.
“The evidence we have uncovered so far is not misleading. This is an absolutely racial hate crime that will be prosecuted as a hate crime,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told reporters Sunday.
Authorities will focus on trying to more clearly understand the reasons for Gendron’s attack, as well as what can be done to stop him as details of gendron’s disturbing high school behavior and online performance emerge.
Gramaglia said Gendron was on local police’s radar when she was detained by police last June after making a “widespread” threat at her school.
He was released a day and a half later after a mental health assessment at the time.
A 180-page manifesto circulating on the Internet, believed to be written by Gendron, outlined the “Grand Replacement Theory,” a racist conspiracy theory of the replacement of whites by minorities in the United States and elsewhere.
It turns out that another online document was written by Gendron that outlined the to-do list for the raid, including cleaning the gun and testing the live stream he would use to post on social media.
A spokesperson for the Erie County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the documents. Gendron surrendered to the police after the incident.
source: Noticias
