2022 Buffalo, New York Supermarket Shooting

Overview

The 2022 Buffalo, New York Supermarket Shooting refers to a mass shooting that took place in mid-May 2022 at a Tops brand supermarket in Buffalo, New York. According to the shooter, identified as Payton Gendron or jimboboiii, he based the attack on white supremacy and the "Great Replacement Theory," fueled by discourse on 4chan's /pol/ and /k/ imageboards, as well as in private Discord servers. Additionally, the shooter wrote a self-proclaimed "Manifesto" on Google Docs, outlining his reasonings for the attack based on racism towards Black people and Jewish people. When the shooting took place, it was livestreamed by the shooter on Twitch, which was soon taken down by the platform. The event inspired controversy and discussion in the U.S. after the shooter's arrest, mostly centered on 2nd Amendment rights and ongoing racism that manifests in real-world violence.

History

Background

Before the shooting took place on May 14th, 2022, the shooter, Payton Gendron, had been active in private Discord servers and on 4chan's /k/ and /pol/ imageboards. Screenshots of Gendron's Discord messages are available for viewing on the website Kiwi Farms in a thread^[1] started by the user UmQasaann on May 14th.

Manifesto

In accordance with UmQasaann's thread, as well as with the information provided by the shooter's self-proclaimed "Manifesto," Gendron was born in 2003 and 18 years old at the time of the shooting. He'd lived in Conklin, New York the entirety of his life (three hours south of Buffalo) and enrolled in SUNY Broome to major in engineering science. He stated in an excerpt^[2] from his manifesto that he started browsing 4chan's /k/ board in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. From there, his views on the Great Replacement^[3] conspiracy theory started to form, where followers believe that ethnically white people were slowly being replaced by non-white ethnicities due to a couple of factors like "low birth rates and high rates of immigration."^[2] Also notable was Gendron's reference to infographics, shitposts and memes that, according to his manifesto,^[12] led to his radicalization.

He later went on to cite the 2019 Christchurch Mosque Shootings shooter, Brenton Tarrant, stating he was inspired by his "manifesto" to commit the act of terror. Additionally, within the manifesto, the shooter included pictures of comedian Sam Hyde holding a gun, captioning them, "And my most recent self pictures are below" (screenshot shown below) in reference to the He Can't Keep Getting Away With It meme.

In the last pages of the document, the shooter attached multiple infographics, charts and memes related to the Great Replacement theory, as well as to the alleged Jewish control of modern media.

Twitch Livestream

In the afternoon of May 14th, 2022, the shooter started a livestream on his Twitch channel, going by the username jimboboiii. It started off with him driving around in his car, taking up a majority of the livestream. In the video, which has since been reuploaded to Kiwi Farms^[1] and removed from Twitch, he's seen driving into the Tops supermarket parking lot, wearing a helmet and safety glasses, as well as a tactical-themed army-green outfit. At one point in the video, he accidentally flashes furry art of Martha the Dog (screenshot shown below).

The shooter then went on to livestream the shooting via a GoPro camera on his head, wherein, he murdered 10 people and wounded three others. Eleven of the victims were Black. In fact, within his "manifesto," the shooter claimed he specifically targeted the supermarket based on the density of Black residents in its zip code.

On May 14th, moments after the attack, an anon on 4chan's /pol/^[4] started a thread, leading with, "just 20 mins ago I just witnessed a mass shooting at a tops supermarket live on twitch with like 20 other viewers. i had opened the stream just a few seconds before he opened fire, and the stream lasted about 30 seconds after that. i saw at least 6 people shot." Though unconfirmed if they actually witnessed the livestream, the anon provided a screenshot but no screen-recording.

More threads emerged on /pol/^[5][6] about the shooter going into the remainder of May 14th, sharing screenshots of his manifesto and other pictures and details about him. Going into May 16th, threads emerged on /pol/^[7] that denounced the shooter's act, however, many were based on the shooter being "inbred" rather based on his acts being morally wrong.

News outlets like BBC^[8] and AP News^[9] started to cover the story, further emphasizing in their coverage the racially motivated nature of the attacks. Additionally, executives at Twitch released a statement regarding the streaming of the shooting on their platform, stating the site “has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents. The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content.”^[10]

Arrest

On May 14th, 2022, the shooter was taken into police custody. Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said the shooting was a "straight-up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community"^[11] The FBI was also onboarded in investing the crime due to it being labeled a "hate crime" based on the shooter's online history and written word.

Other Developments

The day after the shooting on May 15th, 2022, a vigil was held by dozens of local residents at the supermarket (shown below, left). Additionally, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown was interviewed by NBC News on May 15th, where he called for new gun control action. The video received roughly 132,100 views over the course of one day (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References