BUFFALO, N.Y. (Reuters) -An 18-year-old white man accused of killing 10 people in a livestreamed racist shooting at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, briefly appeared in court on Thursday, and the judge set a date next month for his next hearing.
The latest U.S. racist mass shooting – at a Tops Friendly Markets store on Saturday – revived a national debate about guns, domestic terrorism, hate and the internet’s role in spreading it.
Payton Gendron, who was arrested at the store, appeared on Thursday morning before Buffalo City Court Judge Craig Hannah, who scheduled the next court hearing for June 9.
Gendron was dressed in orange prison garb and wore a white medical mask over his face. His hands were shackled.
As the hearing ended, someone in the courtroom gallery shouted, “Hey, you’re a coward!”
At a previous hearing, hours after police said he opened fire with a semi-automatic, assault-style rifle, Gendron was arraigned on a single count of first-degree murder, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole in New York. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bond.
In the attack, 13 people were hit by gunfire, most of them Black, and 10 of them were killed.
The FBI immediately said it was investigating the rampage as a hate crime and an act of “racially motivated violent extremism,” and authorities have pointed to a white supremacist diatribe he is suspected of posting online before the shooting.
It was not clear whether Gendron would immediately face additional state charges.
President Joe Biden, in a visit to Buffalo on Tuesday, condemned white nationalists, as well as online platforms, media outlets and political rhetoric he criticized for spreading racist conspiracy theories.
“What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism, terrorism, domestic terrorism,” Biden said.
New York state Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday opened an investigation into several social media platforms she said the Buffalo grocery store gunman used to plan, promote and broadcast the attack.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced additional measures aimed at curbing domestic terrorism, including legislation to tighten New York gun laws and a directive for state police to exercise their authority to disarm individuals deemed a public threat under the state’s red-flag law.
She accused social media sites of allowing violent extremism to flourish, and said the Buffalo shooting reflected an intersection between “the mainstreaming of hate speech … and the easy access to military-style weapons.”
Gendron is accused of webcasting video of the attack he was committing in real time on Twitch, a live video platform owned by Amazon.com Inc.
While Twitch said it took down the video within two minutes, screenshots from the broadcast circulated on social media throughout the day. Footage of the livestream could still be found on the internet as recently as Wednesday morning.
Authorities said the suspect also is believed to have posted a lengthy racist screed online outlining the “great replacement theory” – the idea that minorities are replacing white people in the United States and other countries – as well as a checklist and journal of his attack preparations.
Buffalo police said Gendron first came to the attention of local law enforcement nearly a year before the Buffalo shooting, when police detained him after he made a threat at his high school, and that he was released after a mental health exam.
Hochul said the murder weapon was purchased legally, but modified with a high-capacity magazine that is outlawed in New York.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in Buffalo, New York; writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Bradley Perrett and Jonathan Oatis)
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