Federal prosecutors filed hate crime charges against the white man accused of opening fire and killing 10 black people in a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York last month.
The suspected gunman, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, will face 26 counts of hate crimes and firearms offenses, which could carry a death sentence, according to the Department of Justice.
‘Gendron’s motive for the mass shooting was to prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race, and to inspire others to commit similar attacks,’ according to the criminal complaint filed in the Western District of New York.
Gendron is accused of shooting 13 people at the Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, a city in western New York. Eleven of the people who were shot were black, as were all of the victims who died.
Authorities say Gendron intentionally chose the area to target black people, and drove 200 miles from his nearly all-white hometown to execute his plan.
His racist views and extensive preparation for the attack were also well documented in an online diary and shared among others shortly before the shooting was carried out.
The day after the shooting, FBI agents executing a search warrant at Gendron’s home discovered a note in which Gendron apologized to his family for the massacre, claiming that he ‘had to commit this attack’ out of care ‘for the future of the white race.’
Gendron was already facing a mandatory life sentence without parole if convicted on New York state murder, domestic terrorism and hate crime charges.
The charges against Gendron include 10 counts of hate crimes resulting in death, three counts of hate crimes involving bodily injury and attempt to kill, 10 counts of using a firearm to commit murder during and in retaliation to a crime of violence and three counts of using and discharging a firearm during and in retaliation to a crime of violence.
.
