Buffalo Shooting Latest: Accused Shooter Planned Attack For Months

BUFFALO, NY — The 18-year-old accused of killing 10 people and wounding three others when he opened fire in a Buffalo supermarket Saturday had planned the massacre for months, detailing his plans through numerous online postings, according to multiple reports.

Payton Gendron of Conklin, New York, is charged with first-degree murder after police say he walked into Tops Market on Buffalo's Jefferson Avenue and opened fire. Wearing body armor and a camera to livestream the attack, Gendron eventually surrendered to authorities.

Authorities said that of the 13 people who were shot, 11 were Black.

Gendron pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. Federal authorities are also considering hate crime charges, The Associated Press reported.

The Washington Post reviewed more than 600 pages of messages reportedly written by Gendron and posted online before the attack. In the messages, the author identified the supermarket as "attack area 1" and identified two other Buffalo locations where he planned to "shoot all blacks."

FBI Director Christopher Wray called it a targeted attack.

"I want to be clear — for my part, from everything we know, this was a targeted attack, a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism," Wray said in a call with law enforcement officials and community leaders, according to The Post.

According to an Associated Press report, the author of the messages also posted hand-drawn maps of the grocery store along with tallies of the number of Black people he counted there during a reconnaissance-style trip before the shooting. The author also detailed how a Black security guard at the supermarket confronted him during the trip to ask what he was doing.

The messages dating as far back as November surfaced on the chat platform Discord two days after the shooting, according to the AP, but were posted publicly sometime ahead of the attack.

The messages were posted under a screen name used by Gendron on other platforms, included photos of Gendron, and referenced events in his personal life, The Washington Post reported.

The messages are in addition to a 180-page document purportedly written by Gendron, which said the attack was intended to terrorize all non-white, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country.

Officials told ABC News that the manifesto espoused "replacement theory," a white supremacist belief that non-whites will eventually replace white people because they have higher birth rates.

Federal authorities are still trying to confirm the document's authenticity.

Last spring, Gendron also made it onto authorities' radar when he made threatening statements against his high school.

A security guard, a religious leader, and a gun-control advocate were among those killed in the attack.

Retired police officer and security guard Aaron Salter, 55, died after trying to protect shoppers during the onslaught, repeatedly firing at the gunman and hitting his armor-plated vest at least once, according to The AP.

"There could have been more victims if not for his actions," Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Sunday.

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Zeneta Everhart told the AP that her son, supermarket employee Zaire Goodman, was helping a shopper outside when he saw a man get out of a car in military gear and point a gun at him. A bullet hit Goodman in the neck.

“Mom! Mom, get here now, get here now! I got shot!” he told his mother by phone. Goodman, 20, was out of the hospital and doing well Monday, his mother said.

In livestreamed video of the attack circulating online, the gunman pointed his weapon at a white person hiding behind a checkout counter but apologized to them and didn't shoot.