Payton Spencer Gendron (born June 20, 2003) is an American mass murderer, white supremacist, and neo-Nazi who committed a mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, in which he killed 10 people and injured 3 others, on May 14, 2022. Gendron, who was 18 years old at the time, had traveled three and a half hours to the supermarket from his hometown of Conklin, New York.
Gendron livestreamed part of the attack on Twitch until the livestream was shut down by the service in under two minutes. He was inspired to carry out the attack after learning about numerous white supremacist mass murderers through 4chan during isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. His main inspiration was Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings, who also livestreamed his attack online.
On May 14, 2022, at around 2:30p.m., Gendron arrived at the supermarket, where he shot 13 people, 11 of whom were black and 2 of whom were white. At 2:36p.m., Gendron had gone to the front of the building, which was surrounded by law enforcement, and was arrested. He had planned to attack more locations. He was taken into custody and charged with over 40 federal and state counts, including first-degree murder and terrorism. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges on May 19.
On November 28, 2022, Gendron pleaded guilty to all state charges in the shooting, including murder, domestic terrorism, and hate crimes in an attempt to avoid the death penalty. On February 15, 2023, Gendron was sentenced to 11 concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole. Federal charges are still ongoing, and the federal prosecution also expressed their intention to seek the death penalty. His federal trial is set to begin on October 13, 2026.
Early life and education Payton S. Gendron was born on June 20, 2003, in Johnson City, New York, and raised in the nearby town of Conklin. He was described by friends as a quiet, reclusive, and polite person; however, he exhibited a range of idiosyncratic behaviors, including wearing a hazmat suit to class. He attended Richard T. Stank Middle School. He graduated from Susquehanna Valley High School in 2021 and was a student at SUNY Broome Community College at the time of the shooting, but rarely attended in-person classes. He also briefly worked at Conklin Reliable Market. His parents are civil engineers and, according to his neighbors, Gendron had previously stated an intention to become one as well.
Investigation of previous threat In June 2021, Gendron had been investigated for making a "generalized threat" or "a threatening statement" at his high school by the police in Broome County. Accounts of the nature of the threat vary; one government official told The Buffalo News that Gendron had threatened to commit a mass shooting at a graduation ceremony, while NBC News states that a teacher had asked him about his plans after the school year, to which Gendron responded, "I want to murder and commit suicide." Contradicting these accounts, in an online chat log from December 9, 2021, Gendron describes staying in the emergency room of a hospital for 20 hours on May 28, 2021, as a result of stating his intention to commit murder–suicide in an online assignment for his economics class, in which Gendron was asked what he wished to do when he retired. He was referred to a hospital for mental health evaluation and counseling but was released after being held for a day and a half. Gendron described the hospital stay as a very negative experience from which he gained encouragement to take action.
Gendron told police that he was merely joking; however, Gendron later wrote online that this was actually a well-executed bluff. He was not charged in connection with the incident since, according to investigators, he had not made a specific enough threat to warrant further action. The New York State Police did not seek an order from a state court to remove guns from Gendron's possession. The mental health evaluation was not an involuntary commitment, which would have prohibited him from buying guns under federal law.
Weapons Gendron cleared the background check by filling in Form 4473, as is typically required under U.S. federal law. During the purchase of the Bushmaster XM-15 AR-15–style rifle used in the shooting, the seller said that Gendron passed the background check and that the seller did not remember Gendron. Gendron cleared another check while purchasing a shotgun at a store in the neighboring town of Great Bend, Pennsylvania, located away from his Conklin house, saying that he would use it for target practice; this shotgun was later recovered by police from Gendron's car. Since New York state prohibits the purchase and possession of ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition, Gendron traveled to Pennsylvania from his home in New York state to purchase a 30-round ammunition magazine. Before the shooting, Gendron wrote that he had purchased a rifle and illegally modified it in order for it to accept 30-round magazines; as New York has a ban on assault weapons. Gendron also wrote that he selected an AR-15–style rifle for its effectiveness, and that he specifically selected the Bushmaster XM-15 for its notoriety.
The police said that Gendron had been in Buffalo in early March, and was also there the day before the shooting, having carried out reconnaissance at the Tops supermarket. According to police, he had researched previous hate-motivated attacks and shootings. According to a childhood friend of Gendron's, Gendron came to the friend's house the day before the shooting and left five boxes of ammunition. Supposedly, Gendron told the friend that he left the ammunition because he needed to rearrange his own house, and that he would retrieve the ammunition later.
On one of his rifles, Gendron had reportedly written the word nigger along with mocking references to reparations. Gendron's gun also reportedly was covered with references to white supremacist mass murderers Dylann Roof, Robert Bowers, Brenton Tarrant, and John Earnest, the acronym SYGAOWN (Stop Your Genocide Against Our White Nations), far-right slang "Buck status: broken", the year 2083—a reference to the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik—and a depiction of the Archangel Michael's Cross of the fascist Romanian Iron Guard.Photo of rifle with names and captions Retrieved June 19, 2022 A law enforcement source told The Daily Beast that Gendron had also written on his rifle the names of one or more victims of the Waukesha Christmas parade attack. On the weapons in his car, which had not been used during the shooting, he reportedly had written "White Lives Matter" and, according to CNN, "what appears to be the name of a victim of a crime committed by a Black suspect."
Manifesto Prior to the shooting, Gendron wrote and released online a 180-page manifesto that primarily references the topic of mass immigration. The manifesto was originally posted on Google Docs on the evening of May 12, two days before the attack, and according to file data, it has not been modified since. Federal law enforcement sources told CNN that they were reviewing the document along with Gendron's 673-page online diary. The manifesto contains biographical information of the author identical to that of Gendron, such as the author sharing Gendron's birth date.
The author describes himself as someone who identified as falling "in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category", while expressing qualified support for the "LGB" community, and holding white supremacist, anti-Semitic, populist, and ecofascist views. He claims to have adopted these ideological stances after he visited the discussion board /pol/ on 4chan, an imageboard, as well as the website The Daily Stormer beginning in May 2020, on which he saw "infographics, shitposts, and memes" around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The manifesto primarily promotes the white nationalist and far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory of Renaud Camus, which claims that elites are promoting immigration and decreasing white birth rates in an attempt to subject whites to a genocide. The manifesto also says that Jews and societal elites are responsible for transgender inclusivity and non-white immigration, that black people disproportionately kill white people, and that non-whites will overwhelm and wipe out the white race.
The manifesto's author also expressed support for far-right mass shooters Dylann Roof, Anders Behring Breivik, and Brenton Tarrant. About 28% of the document is plagiarized from other sources, especially Tarrant's manifesto. As much as 57% of the text-based ideological sections were plagiarized in this manner; this was measured by excluding the sections which consisted of Internet meme images, other pictures taken from online, and logistical discussion about the equipment for the attack.
The planning for the attack commenced in January 2022. Buffalo was targeted because it was the city closest to the author's home that had the most black residents. He then proceeded to select the ZIP Code area within Buffalo with the highest percentage of black residents. The manifesto includes extensive details about preparations for the supermarket attack itself and a plan, following the initial shooting, to travel to a majority-black neighborhood in Buffalo to conduct further attacks. It characterizes the attack as having been "intended to terrorize all nonwhite, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country."
Activity on chat logs and online diary Gendron is also reported to have had an account on the chat platform Discord, with the same username as the Twitch user who livestreamed the attack. Thousands of chat logs were retrieved from the account's postings in a private chatroom, which were written in the form of an online diary and range from November 2021 to May 13, 2022. The logs include photos of Gendron, and the author claimed to be Gendron. Police said that they believed the messages are genuine. The chat logs reference a speeding ticket that is consistent with one received by Gendron. The logs also include to-do list items seemingly indicating that the author was preparing for the attack. The chat logs indicated that the attack was originally planned to occur on March 15 so that the author could commemorate the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings. However, the attack was delayed due to the author developing a case of COVID-19. The logs contained indications from as early as November 2021 that the author planned to livestream a mass shooting targeting black people. He claimed authorship of a post on 4chan from November 9, 2021, that said, "a will happen again soon."
The online diary also had sketches of the layout of the inside of the Tops supermarket. The diary mentions visits to the supermarket on March 8. During these visits, the author notes being challenged by the security guard, which the author described as a close call. He also noted the numbers of black people and white people in the supermarket during his visits. The author considered attacking various locations, including a Walmart in Rochester, New York, and institutions with predominantly black attendees such as churches, malls and elementary schools. He also considered attacking synagogues but decided against it because March 15 would not fall on a Saturday (the Jewish sabbath), thus synagogues were not likely to have many attendees at the author's desired time to attack. He wrote that he used data available through Google to determine when the busiest times in the supermarket would be.