Two weeks after 18-year-old Payton Gendron shot and killed 10 people in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, a grand jury is prepared to deliver a 25-count indictment for what was, at the time, the worst mass shooting in the country this year.
As initially reported by Buffalo’s ABC affiliate WKBW, the indictment includes one count of “domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate in the first degree,” 10 counts of murder in the first degree, 10 counts of murder in the second degree “as a hate crime,” and weapons charges. It is scheduled to be officially made public Thursday at Grendon’s next court arraignment in Erie County.
Grendon, who streamed his massacre online in a self-confessed attempt to emulate the similarly racist 2019 mass shooting of a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, was already charged with first-degree murder in late May. At a hearing on those charges, Grendon pleaded not guilty.
According to the Associated Press, Grendon is also being investigated for potential federal hate crime charges. In his nearly 200-page manifesto written before the attack, Grendon cited the increasingly popular Republican and white nationalist “great replacement” theory that posits a nefarious Jewish plot to replace white Americans with ethnic minorities as the motivation behind his killing spree.
