Residents of Buffalo, New York, gathered at vigils Sunday to mourn the 10 people killed on Saturday, when a white supremacist wearing body armor and carrying an assault rifle opened fire on a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Of the 13 shoppers and store workers shot in the assault, 11 were Black.
Police are calling the massacre a domestic terror attack. They’ve arrested an 18-year-old suspect who reportedly live-streamed the massacre on the video streaming service Twitch. The site took the video down within minutes, but the footage continues to circulate among white supremacists online. The suspect left behind a racist manifesto that included a plan to target a mainly Black neighborhood. Investigators say he had researched the area and drove about 200 miles from his home in Conklin, New York, before arriving a day in advance to conduct reconnaissance. The manifesto heavily plagiarized a screed left behind by the white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. The manifesto refers to the “Great Replacement,” a racist conspiracy theory promoted by far-right media figures like Tucker Carlson of Fox News and embraced by some Republicans, including New York Congressmember Elise Stefanik.
Prosecutors say the shooter purchased the Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle used in the assault lawfully from a licensed gun dealer in his hometown after he passed a
— source democracynow.org | May 16, 2022