A “mass shooting” occurred at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York on Saturday, with 13 people shot and 10 dead.
During a press conference, Buffalo police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime and that the 18-year-old white male allegedly committed the shooting while live-streaming it online on Twitch.
The shooter reportedly traveled from “hours” outside of Buffalo and the shooting happened at Tops Friendly Markets on Jefferson Avenue.
The gunman was identified as Payton Gendron, 18, of Conklin, New York, according to the Associated Press.
Gendron was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty on Saturday evening.
According to police, 11 of the victims in the attack are black and two of them are white.
One victim was a retired Buffalo police officer, who fired at the gunman but hit his bulletproof vest. Three people were shot in the parking lot of Tops.
During a press conference, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the shooter is “a white supremacist who has engaged in an act of terrorism”.
“Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents. The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content,” a Twitch spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Gendron underwent a mental health evaluation in 2021 after making a “generalized threat,” according to police.
New York State Police responded to Susquehanna High School in Conklin, N.Y., “to investigate a report that a 17-year-old student had made a threatening statement”.
“They interviewed the subject, and they felt it was appropriate at that time to have that individual brought in for a mental health evaluation. State police did their job to the fullest that they could at that time,” Gramaglia said.
“He was evaluated, and then he was released. As far as when we say ‘On the radar,’ there was nothing picked up on the state police intelligence, nothing that was picked up on the FBI intelligence. Nobody called in. Nobody called any complaints,” he added.
When police arrived at the grocery store, “Gendron placed the rifle to his neck before dropping the weapon and surrendering,” reported Fox News.
Gramaglia noted that Gendron had “three weapons. There were two in the car and one in his possession”.
“Gendron had repeatedly visited sites espousing white supremacist ideologies and race-based conspiracy theories and extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the man who killed dozens of people at a summer camp in Norway in 2011,” The New York Post reported.
Paul and Pamela Gendron, the gunman’s parents, are reportedly being interviewed by the FBI.
Gendron was ordered held without bail and will appear back in court on Thursday.