BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 A white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday after relatives of his victims confronted him with pain and rage caused by his racist attack.
\nAnger briefly turned physical at Payton Gendron\u2019s sentencing when a victim\u2019s family member rushed at him from the audience. The man was quickly restrained; prosecutors later said he wouldn\u2019t be charged. The proceeding then resumed with an emotional outpouring from people who lost loved ones or were themselves wounded in the attack.
\nGendron, whose hatred was fueled by racist conspiracy theories he encountered online, cried during some of the testimony and apologized to victims and their families in a brief statement.
\nTheir remarks ranged from sorrow to outrage, shouts to tears. Some vehemently condemned him; others quoted from the Bible or said they were praying for him. Several pointed out that he deliberately attacked a Black community a three-hour drive from his home in overwhelmingly white Conklin, New York.
\n\u201cYou\u2019ve been brainwashed,\u201d Wayne Jones Sr., the only child of victim Celestine Chaney, said as sobs rose from the audience. \u201cYou don\u2019t even know Black people that much to hate them. You learned this on the internet.\u201d
\n\u201cI hope you find it in your heart to apologize to these people, man. You did wrong for no reason,\u201d Jones said.
\nGendron\u2019s victims at the Tops Friendly Market \u2014 the only supermarket and a neighborhood hub on Buffalo\u2019s largely Black East Side \u2014 included a church deacon, the grocery store\u2019s guard, a man shopping for a birthday cake, a grandmother of nine and the mother of a former Buffalo fire commissioner. The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86.
\nGendron pleaded guilty in November to crimes including murder and domestic terrorism motivated by hate, a charge that carried an automatic life sentence.
\n\u201cThere can be no mercy for you, no understanding, no second chances,\u201d Judge Susan Eagan said as she sentenced him. She called his rampage \u201ca reckoning\u201d for a nation \u201cfounded and built, in part, on white supremacy.\u201d
\nGendron, 19, is due in a federal court Thursday for a status update in a separate case that could carry a death sentence if prosecutors seek it. His attorney said in December that Gendron is prepared to plead guilty in federal court to avoid execution. New York state does not have the death penalty.
\nThe gunman wore bullet-resistant armor and a helmet equipped with a livestreaming camera as he carried out the May 14 attack with a semiautomatic rifle he purchased legally but then modified so he could load it with illegal high-capacity ammunition magazines.
\n\u201cDo I hate you? No. Do I want you to die? No. I want you to stay alive. I want you to think about this every day of your life,\u201d Tamika Harper, a niece of victim Geraldine Talley, told Gendron. \u201cThink about my family and the other nine families that you\u2019ve destroyed forever.\u201d
\nGendron locked eyes with Harper as she gently spoke. Then he lowered his head and wept.
\nMinutes later, Barbara Massey Mapps excoriated him for killing her 72-year-old sister, Katherine Massey, a neighborhood activist. As Mapps shouted and pointed at Gendron, a person in the audience took a few steps toward him before getting held back.
\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know what we\u2019re going through,\u201d a man shouted as he was led away by court officers. For several minutes thereafter, family members hugged and calmed each other.
\nEagan then ordered Gendron back in after admonishing everyone to behave appropriately.
\nIn his short statement, Gendron acknowledged he \u201cshot and killed people because they were Black.\u201d
\n\u201cI believed what I read online and acted out of hate, and now I can\u2019t take it back, but I wish I could, and I don\u2019t want anyone to be inspired by me,\u201d he told the victims and their relatives. His own parents didn\u2019t attend.
\nOne woman in the audience stood up, screamed \u201cwe don\u2019t need\u201d his remarks and stormed out of the courtroom.
\nThere were only three survivors among the 13 people he shot while specifically seeking out Black shoppers and workers.
\nDeja Brown said her father, Andre Mackniel, was blindsided \u201cat the hands of a selfish boy who\u2019s obviously not educated on the history of African Americans.\u201d
\nMackniel\u2019s young son still calls for a father who was gunned down while shopping for a birthday cake for him, said his brother, Vyonne Elliott.
\nChristopher Braden, a Tops employee who was shot in the leg, said he was haunted by seeing the victims where they lay as he was carried out of the store.
\n\u201cThe visions haunt me in my sleep and every day,\u201d he said.
\nIn documents posted online, Gendron said he hoped the attack would help preserve white power in the U.S. He wrote that he picked the Tops grocery store because it is in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Prosecutor Justin Caldwell said Gendron hoped to start a race war, but instead the community came together.
\nReacting from Washington, NAACP President Derrick Johnson called on federal leaders to acknowledge \u201cthe constant threat of violence\u201d to Black communities and urged the media to stop spreading misinformation that feeds racist conspiracy theories.
\nThe mass shooting in Buffalo, soon followed by another that killed 19 students and two teachers at a Texas elementary school, amplified calls for stronger gun controls.
\nNew York legislators quickly passed a law banning semiautomatic rifle sales to most people under age 21. The state also banned sales of some types of body armor.
\nIn June, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed a compromise gun violence bill intended to toughen background checks, keep firearms from more domestic violence offenders and help states make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged to be dangerous.<\/p>\n
Apnews<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aWhite supremacy, the Holocaust<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 A white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday after relatives of his victims confronted him with pain and rage caused by his racist attack. Anger briefly turned physical at Payton Gendron\u2019s sentencing when a victim\u2019s family member rushed at him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2466,2467,1372],"class_list":["post-5888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-buffalo","tag-supremacist","tag-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5890,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions\/5890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}