Buffalo Shooter Had Waukesha Parade Victim's Name On Rifle: Report

WAUKESHA, WI — The 18-year-old man accused of shooting and killing 10 people at a New York supermarket wrote a Waukesha parade victim's name on his rifle, according to a report.

The misspelled name of a woman killed at the Waukesha Christmas parade in November 2021 appeared to be written on the handguard of Payton Gendron's rifle as he streamed himself firing into a crowd of people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, The Daily Beast reported.

The names of several other parade victims appeared on a picture of the AR-style rifle posted to Twitter, as well as those of a Norwegian mass shooter and a New York City police officer who died in 2022. The rifle was also emblazoned with the number 14, shorthand for a white supremacist slogan and a hate symbol, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Of the 13 people shot in Buffalo, 11 were Black and two were white, WGRZ reported. Erie County District Attorney John Flynn called the shooting spree a hate crime and said prosecutors have evidence that Gendron acted with "racial animosity."

Speaking at a news conference last November, Waukesha Police Chief Dan Thompson said there was no evidence the parade attack was an act of terrorism.

Darrell Brooks Jr., 39, was accused of killing six people when he drove his SUV through a crowd during last year's Christmas parade. Brooks, a Black man, was fleeing a domestic violence incident and had a history of violence, according to prosecutors.

Brooks' trial in Waukesha starts Oct. 3 and is expected to run through Oct. 28, court records showed. He was charged with multiple crimes, including six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and nearly 70 accounts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.