We are investigating this incident as both a hate crime and a case of racially motivated, violent extremism", said an investigator of the US Federal Police FBI on Saturday. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul called the fatal shooting terrorism. Three other people were injured by the shooting. According to police, the majority of the victims, 11 out of 13, were black.
The shooter was taken into custody immediately after Saturday's crime, Mayor Byron Brown said. Investigators examined an ideological manifesto of the alleged perpetrator that surfaced on the Internet, in which he expresses racist ideas that may have motivated him to commit his crime. The FBI defines hate crimes primarily as those in which the perpetrator attacks victims on the basis of skin color, origin or religion.
Hochul, who flew to Buffalo after the crime, said the perpetrator was a right-wing extremist who committed an "act of terrorism." Had committed. She sincerely hopes this person who just committed a hate crime will spend the rest of his days behind bars. Mayor Brown said the young man was not from Buffalo. "The shooter traveled hours from outside this community to commit this crime against the people of Buffalo". The crime occurred from 2:30 p.M. Local time, after the heavily armed perpetrator got out of his car several kilometers north of downtown Buffalo. In the supermarket parking lot, he opened fire on several people and then entered the store, where he eventually surrendered to police.
According to police chief Joseph Gramaglia, he had a camera with him and was wearing a helmet – and streamed the act live on a social network. There is "certain evidence, which pointed to a racist act, it was said further to the investigation status. According to initial findings, the shooter acted alone. The supermarket is located in an area inhabited mainly by blacks. "Why does a white man come here and shoot up a black supermarket?", said a local resident on local television.
The shocking crime hit Buffalo in eastern New York on a warm spring day when people were enjoying the sunshine and recreational activities like barbecues, Mayor Brown said. "What started as a beautiful day in the city of Buffalo has turned into a terrible day. A day that breaks the heart of every member of our community."
One police officer described the crime scene in The Buffalo News: "It's like walking into a horror movie, but it's all real". The newspaper also quoted a supermarket employee who said he had gone into the freezer shortly before the incident. "I was hiding. I just hid. I didn't want to leave the room", he said.
The anchorwoman for local TV station WKBW said, visibly shaken, that her husband had visited the supermarket about an hour before the crime. In the supermarket, according to police, the suspected perpetrator walked the aisles and shot his victims specifically in the head. A security guard shot at the 18-year-old, but the bullets got lodged in his bulletproof vest. The security guard was then killed by him. Racism on the part of right-wing radicals has been widely recognized in the U.S., and not just since "Black Lives Matter"-Movement perceived as growing and dangerous problem. The anti-racism organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sees right-wing extremism on the rise in the U.S. The ADL writes "White Supremacists assumed that white people were in danger of becoming extinct. They believed that almost all acts were justified, which helped to "save" white people.
Time and again in the U.S., there are fatal incidents involving firearms, shootings or acts in which a person opens fire in schools, supermarkets or other public places. More than 40,000 people die by firearms in the United States each year – many times more than in Germany or other industrialized nations.
In addition to very lax rules for the procurement of heavy automatic rifles, a flourishing black market is to blame, against which the government in Washington has so far tried to take action with little success. Buffalo crime is the most serious by a shooter in the U.S. In more than a year. In the summer of 2019, a racially motivated perpetrator had killed more than 20 people at a supermarket in El Paso, Texas.
U.S. President Joe Biden reacted with horror to the act, calling it "horrific". "The President and the First Lady pray for the victims and their relatives", The White House said Saturday evening (local time). Biden had been briefed on the crime by his homeland security adviser, he said, and would continue to be kept informed. Buffalo is the second-largest city in the state after New York City. The town, which has a population of around 280,000, is just a few kilometers from Niagara Falls. The waterfalls are a world famous tourist attraction.