Gunman in racist mass shooting in Buffalo to face death penalty
Al Jazeera
Payton Gendron murdered 10 Black people at a supermarket in New York state in 2022.
Federal prosecutors in the United States will seek the death penalty against Payton Gendron, a white supremacist who murdered 10 Black people during a livestreamed supermarket rampage in New York state.
Gendron, 20, is already serving a life sentence in prison with no chance of parole, after he pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism in the 2022 attack in Buffalo.
In a notice announcing the decision to seek the death penalty, Trini Ross, US attorney for western New York, wrote that Gendron had selected the supermarket “in order to maximise the number of Black victims”.
The notice cited a range of factors for the decision, including the substantial planning leading to the shooting and the decision to target at least one victim who was “particularly vulnerable due to old age and infirmity”.
On May 14, 2022, the then-18-year-old Gendron, had driven from his hometown of Conklin, more than 322km (200 miles) away, wearing heavy body armour and wielding an AR-15 assault rifle.
