The white supremacist gunman who fatally shot 10 Black shoppers at a Buffalo supermarket last year was removed from a sentencing hearing on Wednesday after an enraged man tried to attack him.
After the emotional outburst, Payton Gendron, 19, was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison, without the possibility of parole, by Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan.
He pleaded guilty in November to 10 counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, one count of domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate, and one count of weapons possession for a May 14, 2022, mass shooting at Tops Friendly Markets.
Three people survived the horrific rampage, which Gendron livestreamed on the internet.
Gendron posted a manifesto online that laid out his desire to eliminate Black people and preserve a white nation, citing other racist murderers as inspiration. He said he selected the Tops in Buffalo, a three-hour drive from his hometown of Conklin, because the neighborhood it was in was largely Black. To carry out the mass shooting, Gendron donned body armor and a tactical helmet, then opened fire using a semi-automatic rifle adorned with bigoted messages and symbols.
On Wednesday, impassioned family members of Gendron’s victims addressed him in court.
“We love our kids!” Barbara Massey, whose 72-year-old sister, Katherine, died in the shooting, shouted at an orange-jumpsuited and bespectacled Gendron. “We never go in no neighborhoods to take people out!”
With that, a man in a gray sweatsuit rushed toward Gendron as bystanders pleaded, “Don’t do it!” He was intercepted by court security before he got into striking range, and Gendron was escorted out.
“You don’t know what we’re going through,” someone yelled as Gendron was hurried away.
A few minutes later, Gendron was brought back into the courtroom and the hearing continued.
“We cannot have that in the courtroom,” Eagan said. “We must conduct ourselves appropriately because we are all better than that.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing some of the victims’ families in civil litigation related to the Tops shooting, addressed the media after the hearing was over.
“Today was very painful, but it was necessary,” he said. “It was necessary because, to many people in America, they’ve swept this matter under the rug. Sad to say, because there have been other mass shootings. And so it was necessary that these families remind everybody that this was real… It’s so important when you think about how they refuse to be marginalized.”
Of the man who earlier lunged at Gendron in the courtroom, Crump said that “nobody needs to pass judgement on him” because no one can possibly know what they themselves would have done being that close to their loved one’s “executioner.”
“Thoughts and prayers only go so far,” Crump intoned. “At some point, we need legislation.”
Prosecutors said Gendron meticulously planned the massacre, twice traveling to the Tops store prior to the shooting in order to become familiar with the location and make sure there were sufficient numbers of Black targets. Just 10 days after Gendron’s attack, a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at a local elementary school.
When Gendron pleaded guilty last fall, his parents released a statement through their attorney, which said they “remain shocked and shattered” by their son’s “hideous attack.”
“Our hearts are broken over the devastation he caused to the innocent victims he killed and wounded, their families, and the African-American community in Buffalo and beyond,” Paul and Pamela Gendron wrote.
On Wednesday, Gendron opted to address the victims’ relatives in court.
As he began to apologize for doing “a terrible thing,” one family member erupted with rage.
“He doesn’t mean none of that shit!” she yelled.
The sentencing hearing comes just two days after a gunman opened fire on the campus of Michigan State University, killing three students and wounding five others. Some of those who lived through the horrifying incident had already survived mass shootings in high school.
In October, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a report detailing how “fringe online platforms” helped to influence and radicalize Gendron. The report pointed the finger at message boards like 4chan and streaming services like Twitch, saying they had been “weaponized to publicize and encourage copycat violent attacks.”
The pair called for legislative reforms to criminalize extremist content created by perpetrators of a homicide, penalties for those who share that same material, and increased accountability for companies that don’t work to remove “unlawful violent criminal content” from their platforms.
Last month, a British teen was sentenced to 11.5 years for producing racist videos that reportedly influenced Gendron.
The state charges against Gendron will put him in prison for the rest of his life, without the possibility of parole. He is also facing pending federal charges, for which he could face a death sentence.
