Buffalo supermarket shooting suspect pleads guilty to murder

BUFFALO – The man charged with killing 10 Black people in a grocery store here pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the massacre.

Authorities have said that Payton Gendron, then 18, was specifically seeking to kill Black people when he opened fire at the Tops Friendly Markets store on May 14. Investigators believe that the white man posted a rambling, racist screed online declaring himself a white supremacist and pledging to kill Black people.

Appearing in a Buffalo courtroom just minutes away from the Tops store, the gunman pleaded guilty in state court to murder and domestic terrorism motivated by hate. The domestic terrorism charge carries a sentence of life in prison without parole; New York state does not have the death penalty. Sentencing is scheduled for February.

While the pleas submitted Monday signal an ending for the state criminal case, the attacker is still facing a federal hate crimes case. Federal officials could pursue a death sentence but have not said whether they intended to.

The guilty pleas in Buffalo come as the country is grappling with a recent spate of mass gun violence. Last week, a Walmart supervisor in Chesapeake, Va., shot and killed six colleagues before fatally shooting himself. Just days earlier, an attacker in Colorado Springs shot and killed five people inside an LGBTQ nightclub there. And not long before that, police say a student at the University of Virginia shot and killed three of his schoolmates.

In Buffalo, Rose Wysocki, produce manager at the Tops location where the shooting took place, showed up to the hearing Monday morning wearing her work shirt and name tag. Wysocki said she was at the store the day of the shooting and was in court to show support for her slain co-workers. She said she continues to have nightmares about that day.

“My heart hurts every day for those people we lost,” she said.

“I want him to know that he didn’t totally destroy us,” Wysocki said. “I want him to know that we all think the same of him. Hate doesn’t even cover how we feel.”

The attack in Buffalo, which was live-streamed online, targeted people at a grocery store in a largely Black neighborhood, setting off waves of fear in the city and nationwide. President Biden, visiting Buffalo after the shooting, called it “domestic terrorism” and a “murderous, racist rampage.” In a Washington Post-Ipsos poll after the shooting, three-quarters of Black Americans said they worried about them or their loved ones getting physically attacked.

After the attack, more details emerged suggesting that the gunman planned the shooting extensively. The rambling 180-page screed posted online invoked the racist theory that white people are intentionally being replaced and detailed a plot to attack Black people in Buffalo, about 200 miles from Gendron’s home in Conklin, N.Y.

This rant was posted online, and a draft was found by law enforcement officials on the gunman’s computer, authorities said.

The Washington Post also reviewed hundreds of pages of messages posted online by a writer identifying themself as Gendron. Those messages described a decision to target that specific Tops grocery store due to the size of the local Black population as well as plans to attack two other locations in Buffalo to “shoot all blacks,” the writer said.

Police have said they believe the gunman intended to keep killing people after attacking the grocery store.

During the attack, the gunman began shooting people in the parking lot and then went inside to kill more. At one point, the gunman shot a victim and then, when the person was on the ground, fired into their body again to ensure they were dead, an FBI special agent wrote in a court filing.

The gunman then turned his rifle on a white employee of the grocery store who had been shot in the leg, the agent wrote. Instead of shooting this person, the agent wrote, the gunman said “Sorry” and then kept searching for Black people to kill.

The gunman was taken into custody after the shooting. His rifle, authorities said, was littered with writings that included racial slurs, the names of other mass shooters and the statement, “Here’s your reparations!” All told, the FBI special agent wrote, the gunman fired about 60 shots during the massacre.

After he was indicted by a state grand jury in New York, the Buffalo gunman was also charged with federal hate-crime charges and gun crimes. While that case could lead to a potential death sentence, it remains unclear whether the Justice Department will seek the death penalty.

President Biden opposed the death penalty during his 2020 campaign. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who will decide whether the Justice Department pursues the death penalty, issued a moratorium on federal executions last year. The moratorium only prevents executions from being scheduled; it does not stop the Justice Department from seeking the death penalty in ongoing prosecutions.

During the Biden administration, the Justice Department has defended death sentences previously handed down, including in the case of the avowed white supremacist who killed nine Black parishioners inside a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015 and the surviving Boston Marathon bomber.

Both attacks occurred during the Obama administration, when Biden was serving as vice president, and that administration decided to pursue death sentences in both cases.