The shooter in a racially motivated rampage at a Buffalo supermarket this year pleaded guilty Monday to each of the more than 20 charges against him.
Payton Gendron will spend his life in prison after pleading guilty to state charges including murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism for the May 14 shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets store in a Black neighborhood in the western New York city.
Each of the 10 people killed in the shooting was Black and ranged in age from 32 to 86.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/HAQUMB24GFAPHFSK3K52MNV5KE.jpg)
Gendron, who is white, allegedly wrote in a 180-page manifesto that the neighborhood where he later carried out the shooting with a semiautomatic rifle had “the highest Black percentage that is close enough to where I live.”
The 19-year-old Gendron is from Conklin, N.Y., located about 200 miles southeast of the scene of the attack.
Breaking News
As it happens
Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts.
Family members of the victims and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown were among those who attended Monday’s hearing, where Gendron replied “yes” and “guilty” when asked if he killed each individual victim because of their race.
“I understand this is a momentous and tremendously emotional event,” Judge Susan Eagan told the courtroom at the beginning of the hearing.
Gendron was indicted by a grand jury on 25 counts in June, including the state terrorism charge that requires a life sentence.
He pleaded guilty as well Monday to charges related to three people who were wounded in the shooting.
“This critical step represents a condemnation of the racist ideology that fueled his horrific actions on May 14,” lawyer Brian Parker, who is representing Gendron, said Monday. “It is our hope that a final resolution of the state charges will help in some small way to keep the focus on the needs of the victims and the community.”
It’s the first-ever conviction on a hate-motivated terrorism charge in New York that became a law and went into effect in 2020, according to Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, who praised the “swift justice” that came from Monday’s hearing.
With News Wire Services
