Police: Suspect had plans to continue attack
“There was evidence that was uncovered that he had plans, had he gotten out of here, to continue his rampage and continue shooting people,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told CNN. “He’d even spoken about possibly going to another store.”
It “appears” the suspect planned to kill more Black people, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said, adding, “we need to drill down further.”
There is “some documentation” the suspect had plans possibly for a shooting at “another large superstore,” Gramaglia said. “He was going to get in his car and continue to drive down Jefferson Avenue and continue doing the same thing.”
The Buffalo shooting was a “straight-up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said. “This was pure evil.”
The gunman killed several people in the parking lot before entering the building. He exchanged gunfire with an armed security guard — who was killed — and shot more people inside, then exited and surrendered to police.
Investigators believe the suspect acted alone and a day before the shooting did reconnaissance at the Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, Gramaglia said. He also livestreamed the assault on Twitch as it occurred; the company took down the video within minutes, it said.
Suspect did high school project on murder-suicides, sheriff says
“We continue to investigate this case as a hate crime, a federal hate crime, and as a crime perpetrated by a racially motivated, violent extremist,” Stephen Belongia, special agent in charge of the FBI Buffalo field office, said Sunday at a news conference.
The document’s author also writes that he targeted this Buffalo neighborhood because it’s in a ZIP code that “has the highest Black percentage that is close enough to where I live.”
Indeed, the ZIP code that includes the store, 14208, is 78% Black, the highest percentage of Black population of any ZIP code in upstate New York, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey. The shooting suspect is from the town of Conklin, New York, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Buffalo near the Pennsylvania border.
The document also states the suspect bought the main gun he used, a Bushmaster XM-15, from a gun store before “illegally modifying it.”
“We are obviously going through (the document) with a fine-toothed comb and reviewing that for all evidence,” prosecutor Flynn told CNN.
A year ago, the suspect landed on the radar of police, officials said. New York State Police visited him in June after he turned in a high school project about murder-suicides, Garcia said.
“The state police arrived at his house at that point last year,” the sheriff said. “He stayed at a facility — I’m not sure if it was a hospital or a mental health facility — for a day and a half.”
State police investigated and responded to a report that an unnamed 17-year-old student had made “a threatening statement” in June at Susquehanna Valley Central High School, they said earlier. The student was taken into custody and to a hospital for a mental health evaluation, the agency said.
Entire community affected by mass shooting
Saturday’s attack stunned those who live in the heart of the Kingsley and Masten Park neighborhoods.
Geraldine Talley, 62, was doing her regular grocery, shopping with her fiancé Saturday when she was shot and killed, her niece Lakesha Chapman told CNN.
“She’s sweet, sweet, you know, the life of the party,” Chapman said. “She was the person who always put our family reunion together, she was an avid baker … mother of two beautiful children.”
“We’re outraged,” she added. “This is not, obviously, the first racially triggered attack in America. However, it is the first that hits our home.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced $2.8 million for the victims and their families, her office said in a statement.
“The entire world is watching how we will come together as New Yorkers to overcome this unthinkable tragedy. Buffalo, my hometown, is the City of Good Neighbors and New York State will be good neighbors for them,” she said.
With the grocery closed because of the investigation, Tops Markets is working with a representative of the Masten District to secure free food and supplies, plus free transportation, for those in need it, it said.
The mayor called the site “near and dear” to his heart.
“It’s one that I patronize from time to time,” Brown said Saturday, “my family patronizes from time to time, and some of the victims of this shooter’s attack are people that all of us standing up here know.”
CNN’s Holly Yan, Casey Tolan, Artemis Moshtaghian, Sarah Jorgensen, Polo Sandoval, Chuck Johnston, Samantha Beech, Liam Reilly, Eric Levenson, Amir Vera, Dakin Andone, Haley Burton, Emma Tucker and Shimon Prokupecz contributed to this report.
