New details appear after the mass shooting of the Buffalo supermarket

BUFALA, NY – A weekend shopkeeper and a retired police officer who worked as a security guard were among the 10 white teenagers shot dead in a Buffalo supermarket who authorities say were motivated by racial hatred.

Police said Peyton Hendron shot 11 blacks and two whites Saturday in February at the Tops Friendly Market, which the 18-year-old led live before surrendering to authorities.

Among those killed was Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who fired several shots at Hendron, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramalia said on Saturday. The bullet hit the armor of an armed man, but had no effect. Hendron then killed Salter before hunting for more victims.

Also killed was 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, the mother of retired Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, who told Buffalo News that his “mother was a mother without a mother.”

“She was a blessing to all of us,” he added.

Catherine Messi, who went to the grocery store, was also killed, the newspaper said.

It was not immediately clear why Hendron drove about 200 miles from his Canclin, New York, to Buffalo and this grocery store located in a predominantly black area, but screenshots that seem to be from the Twitch broadcast seem to show a racial epithet smeared on the rifle used in the attack, as well as number 14, is a probable reference to the slogan of white supremacy.

Eri County Sheriff John Garcia directly called the shooting a hate crime.

“It was pure evil,” Garcia said.

A Twitch statement said she stopped Hendron’s transfer “less than two minutes after the violence began.”

Mass shootings have further alarmed a nation plagued by racial tensions, gun violence and hate crimes. The day before, Dallas police said they were investigating the shooting in the Korean city of the city as a hate crime. The Buffalo attack came just a month after a shooting in the Brooklyn subway that injured 10 and just over a year after 10 were killed in a shooting at a Colorado supermarket.

Hendron, confronted by police in the vestibule of the store, put a rifle to his neck, but was convinced to drop it. Later Saturday, he was charged with murder by appearing before a judge in a paper dress.

A law enforcement spokesman told the Associated Press that investigators were investigating whether he had posted the manifesto online. The official was not allowed to speak publicly on the matter and did so on condition of anonymity.

Buffalo police declined to comment on the document, which seems to explain the racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic beliefs of the attacker, including the desire to expel from the United States all those who are not of European descent. two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

Associated Press writers Michael Balzamo and Eric Tucker of Washington contributed to this report.