A judge on Wednesday sentenced the man who killed 10 Black people in a racist massacre at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket last May to life in prison without parole.
In November, the shooter, Payton Gendron, pleaded guilty to 25 state counts, including first-degree murder, domestic terrorism motivated by hate and attempted murder as a hate crime.
The shooter targeted a Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo because of its location in a predominantly Black community, police said. Investigators discovered that he researched the racial makeup of the neighborhood online and arrived at least a day in advance of the massacre to scope out the area.
You can read about the victims here.
A lawyer for people injured in the mass shooting as well as family members of those killed previously said the shooter entered a guilty plea to avoid “a lengthy trial.”
Authorities said the shooter modeled his attack after a xenophobic massacre at a New Zealand mosque in 2019. Both shooters livestreamed their racist rampages.
The Buffalo footage, which is believed to have been viewed millions of times, prompted New York officials to propose creating laws that would punish people for frivolously distributing images of a homicide.
And similar to the shooter in New Zealand, the Buffalo shooter posted racist online writings. Some postings referenced the “replacement theory,” popular among many conservatives, which baselessly claims an evil cabal is plotting to replace white Americans with immigrants and nonwhite people.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.