Authorities claimed a white teenager who killed ten people in a racist assault in a Black area in western New York was brought into jail last year and given a mental health exam after threatening violence at his high school, Reuters reported.
On Sunday, more information about the perpetrator, Payton Gendron, 18, and his assault on a Buffalo grocery, which officials termed as an act of “racially motivated violent extremism,” surfaced, including the earlier threats.
After the Buffalo shooting where he killed 13 persons, 11 of whom were Black, Gendron surrendered to authorities on Saturday. He has been convicted of first-degree murder, which in New York carries a potential sentence of a life sentence without the possibility of parole, and he has pled not guilty.
Gendron had traveled to Buffalo from his residence several hours away the day before the assault to conduct “reconnaissance” on the region, authorities said on Sunday. He traveled to the Tops Friendly Market on Saturday afternoon, when he began an assault that he streamed live on Twitch, an Amazon-owned social media site.
Gendron, dressed in combat gear, started shooting with a semi-automatic weapon that he had lawfully acquired but illegally modified. In his car, authorities discovered two more guns: a rifle and a shotgun.
According to Gramaglia, Gendron first came to the attention of local police departments last June, when he was jailed after making “generalized” threats at his high school. Gendron was sent to the hospital for a mental health assessment but was discharged after less than two days.
Governor Kathy Hochul of New York said to ABC News on Sunday that an inquiry will look into what could have been done to stop the adolescent, who appears to have posted a series of violent, racist ideas online.
The White House announced in a statement that President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit Buffalo on Tuesday.
A 180-page manifesto thought to have been written by Gendron leaked online, outlining “The Great Replacement Theory” – a racist conspiracy theory claiming white people in the United States and other nations are being replaced by minorities.
Cleaning the pistol and testing the live stream were among the items on a to-do list for the attack, which looked to have been authored by Gendron.
The Buffalo shooting comes after a series of racially motivated mass killings in recent years, including an attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018 that killed 11 people and the Atlanta spa killings in March 2021, in which a white man murdered eight Asians.
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