Buffalo gunman had threatened high school shooting, official says

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The 18-year-old gunman who authorities say killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket had previously threatened a shooting at his high school and was sent for mental health treatment, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

Payton Gendron had appeared on the radar of police last year after he threatened to carry out a shooting at Susquehanna High School around the time of graduation, the official said. New York State Police said troopers were called to the Conklin school on June 8, 2021, for a report that a 17-year-old student had made threatening statements.

Police said the student was taken into custody under a state mental health law and taken to a hospital for an evaluation. The police statement did not give the student’s name.

The law enforcement official was not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation and did so on the condition of anonymity.

Authorities said Gendron shot, in total, 11 Black people and two white people Saturday in a rampage motivated by racial hatred that he broadcast live. Twitch said in a statement that it ended Gendron’s transmission “less than two minutes after the violence started.”

A preliminary investigation found 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 at a summer camp in Norway in 2011, the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AP.

It wasn’t immediately clear why Gendron had traveled about 200 miles from his Conklin, N.Y., home to Buffalo and that particular grocery store, but investigators believe Gendron had specifically researched the demographics of the population around the Tops Friendly Market, the official said. The market is located in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

“It’s just too much. I’m trying to bear witness but it’s just too much. You can’t even go to the damn store in peace,” Buffalo resident Yvonne Woodard told the AP. “It’s just crazy.”