Gunman Kills 10 at Buffalo Supermarket in Racist Attack

Shortly after Mr. Gendron was captured, a manifesto believed to have been posted online by the gunman emerged, riddled with racist, anti-immigrant views that claimed white Americans were at risk of being replaced by people of color. In the video that appeared to have been captured by the camera affixed to his helmet, an anti-Black racial slur can be seen on the barrel of his weapon.

The attack, at a Tops Friendly Market in a largely Black neighborhood in east Buffalo, conjured grim comparisons to a series of other massacres motivated by racism, including the killing of nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015; an antisemitic rampage in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 that left 11 people dead; and an attack at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, where the man charged had expressed hatred of Latinos. More than 20 people died there.

In the Buffalo grocery store, where four employees were shot, the savagery and planning were evident: Mr. Gendron was armed with an assault weapon and wore body armor, the police said. And his preferred victims seemed clear as well: All told, 11 of the people shot were Black and two were white, the authorities said.

“It was a straight up racially motivated hate crime,” John Garcia, the Erie County sheriff, said.

Three of his victims outside were killed, the police said later. One was wounded.

Then he entered the busy grocery store and continued his rampage, broadcasting the footage live online.

A retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard fired multiple shots at the gunman. The authorities said that the suspect was struck but was wearing body armor and managed to return fire, killing the security guard.

He shot shoppers and employees, according to the police, leaving a trail of bodies in the aisles. Screenshots of the broadcast circulating online appeared to show the shooter, at one point, holding a gun and standing over a body.

Shonnell Harris, an operation manager at the Tops, told The Buffalo News that she was stocking shelves when she heard loud noises and saw people running toward the back of the store. Ms. Harris stumbled several times as she ran for her life, she said, before managing to escape through the rear door. She estimated that she heard more than 70 shots.

And she saw the shooter. “He had army fatigue stuff on,” she told The Buffalo News.

Eventually, the gunman returned to the front of the store, where he was confronted by Buffalo police in the vestibule. He then put the gun to his own neck, said the police commissioner, Joseph A. Gramaglia, at a news conference.

Two patrol officers on the scene persuaded the gunman to drop the gun, Mr. Gramaglia said. He began removing some of his tactical gear in surrender, according to officials. Then the police tackled him, witnesses told The Buffalo News.

In the end, 10 people were dead, with three sustaining what appeared to be non-life threatening injuries. Of the 13 people shot, 11 were Black.

At some point during the shooting, Dominique Calhoun pulled into the parking lot, about to treat her two daughters to ice cream, when she suddenly saw people running out of the store screaming. “That literally could’ve been me,” she said.

“That literally could’ve been me,” Ms. Calhoun said. “I’m just in shock. I’ve never had something like this happen so close to home.”

Ken Stephens, 68, a member of a local anti-violence group, described a grisly scene. “I came up here, and bodies were everywhere,” he said.

News of the shooting spread quickly across the city. Marilyn Hanson, 60, raced to Tops to make sure her daughter, who lived nearby, wasn’t among the victims; she was safe.

Both Ms. Hanson and her daughter shop at the store often.

“My daughter was so scared because that could’ve been me in that store,” Ms. Hanson said, adding: “If a Black man did this, he’d be dead, too,” referring to the fact that the shooter had surrendered and been taken into custody.

Daniel Love, 24, was inside his Love Barber Shop near the supermarket with his wife when he heard a noise, he said. His wife is from Iraq and immediately recognized the sound of gunfire. He told her to get down, he said. He eventually ran to the parking lot and saw the lifeless body of someone he knew.

Ulysees O. Wingo Sr., a member of the Buffalo Common Council who represents a district adjacent to the site of the shooting, said he also knew some victims. As he spoke, onlookers gathered at the site, with about 100 standing along a side street. Yellow police tape cordoned off the block surrounding the store, and at least two dozen police officers, along with several vehicles, guarded the perimeter.

“This is the largest mass shooting to date in the city of Buffalo,” Mr. Wingo said. “I don’t think anyone here in the city of Buffalo thought that something like this could ever happen, would ever happen.”

Mr. Wingo said most of the shoppers at the Tops supermarket were Black, mirroring the surrounding neighborhood.

Dorothy Simmons, 64, typically spends part of her Saturdays at Tops, shopping for food to prepare for Sunday dinner. “That’s what we do in this community,” said Ms. Simmons, who has lived in East Buffalo all her life. On this Saturday, Ms. Simmons was at work in Amherst when she heard the news. She cried, she said. “This is our store — this is our store,” Ms. Simmons said.

Ms. Simmons, who is Black, said the fact that the gunman was able to surrender showed disparity.

“If that had been my son, it would have never been surrender. We never had a chance to surrender,” Ms. Simmons said. “It would never be that way.”

Dan Higgins contributed reporting from Buffalo, New York.

And it has repeatedly been the motivation for attacks across the United States and beyond, from the Poway, Ca. synagogue shooting in 2019 to the killing of 51 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the same year.

The racist theory was directly referenced in a four-page screed written by the man charged with killing more than 20 people in El Paso, which described an attack in response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and outlined fears about the group gaining power in the United States.

One year earlier, when 11 people were killed at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the accused gunman had espoused similar racist views, referring to the people helped by a Jewish agency that aids refugees as “invaders.”

The theory was conceived in the early 2010s by Renaud Camus, a French author who has written about fears of a white genocide, arguing that immigrants who give birth to more children represent a threat to white people.

Mr. Camus has attempted to distance himself from violent white supremacists, decrying killings even as his ideas have been referenced in more attacks. But he told The New York Times in 2019 that he still stands by the notion.

The idea that white people should fear being replaced by “others” has spread through far-right online platforms, shaping discussions among American white nationalists, The Times has reported.

It has also been evident across some acts of violence. About 60 percent of the extremist murders committed in the United States between 2009 and 2019 were committed by people espousing white supremacist ideologies like the replacement theory, the Anti-Defamation League found.

“It is the most mass-violence-inspiring idea in white supremacist circles right now,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “This particular idea has superseded almost everything else in white supremacist circles to become the unifying idea across borders.”

Experts have said the belief represents a shift in the conversations of white supremacists. Several decades ago, they often proclaimed that they were superior because of their race. While that continues today, many now focus on the idea that they fear extinction at the hands of people of color. At a racist rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017, marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

Mr. Gendron, an 18-year-old white man, espoused similar views in the manifesto, directly referencing “racial replacement” and “white genocide.” The first page contained a symbol known as the sonnenrad, or black sun — two concentric circles with jagged beams emanating from the center. The Anti-Defamation League has said it was commonly used in Nazi Germany, and has now been adopted by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Mr. Gendron praised nationalism and blamed European men for allowing themselves to get “ethnically replaced.” He lamented diversity in America, writing that people of color should “leave while you still can.” And he criticized progressives, saying they had succeeded only at “teaching white children to hate themselves.”

Ms. Beirich, who reviewed the manifesto on Saturday, said it seemed to contain a “hodgepodge of every crazy white supremacist idea.”

It unfolded in a largely Black neighborhood in Buffalo, and 11 of the people shot were Black, officials said. Mr. Gendron wrote in his manifesto that he had selected the area because it held the largest percentage of Black residents near his home in the state’s Southern Tier.

On Saturday evening, authorities pored over the document, which outlined each step of a plan to kill as many Black people as possible.

He named the Bushmaster semiautomatic assault rifle he would use. He constructed a full timeline of the day, detailing the parking spot he would drive to, where he would eat beforehand and where he would livestream the violence. And he had carefully studied the layout of the grocery store, writing that he would shoot a security guard near the entrance before walking through aisles and firing upon Black shoppers, shooting them twice in the chest when he could.

His writings were also riddled with racist, anti-immigrant views arguing that white Americans are at risk of being replaced by people of color, a common trope on the far-right known as the “great replacement” theory. The same ideas have motivated gunmen in several other mass shootings.

Mr. Gendron wrote that he was inspired by the perpetrators of other white supremacist acts of violence, naming Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black parishioners in South Carolina in 2015, among other gunmen. His plan for the shooting in Buffalo resembled the 2019 massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Tex., in which more than 20 people died and the gunman had also posted a four-page screed filled with white supremacist views.

He said that he felt a particular connection to Brenton Harrison Tarrant — calling him the person “who had radicalized him the most.” Mr. Tarrant was sentenced to life without parole for killing 51 Muslims during Friday prayer at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Mr. Gendron said that he had watched Mr. Tarrant’s livestream of the attack and read his writings.

Buffalo officials said that Mr. Gendron had “traveled hours from outside” the neighborhood to unleash gunfire at unsuspecting shoppers at an outlet of the regional grocery chain Tops Friendly Markets. He lived in the Southern Tier with his parents and two brothers, according to the manifesto.

A spokeswoman at SUNY Broome Community College near Binghamton added that he was a former student whose dates of attendance were not immediately known.

Mr. Gendron’s writings depicted a man who grew to hold racist views in recent years as he visited fringe online spaces. His beliefs and ideology had moved farther right over the past three years, he wrote.

Around May 2020, during a period of pandemic boredom, Mr. Gendron said that he had begun to frequent 4chan, an anonymous forum, including its Politically Incorrect message board. There, he said, he was exposed to the conspiracy theory that white people are at risk of being replaced.

He had been “passively preparing” for the attack in Buffalo for several years, purchasing ammunition and gear, while infrequently practicing shooting, he wrote. Around January, he wrote, the plans “actually got serious.”

Eduardo Medina and Vimal Patel contributed reporting.