Buffalo Shooter Payton Gendron Pleads Guilty in Massacre

The white gunman who opened fire in a supermarket in a predominately Black neighborhood pleaded guilty to murder and hate crime charges on Monday.

Payton Gendron, now 19, killed 10 people and wounded three more with a semiautomatic rifle at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in May, when the store was filled with shoppers.

Gendron appeared at Erie County Court on Monday for a hearing that was supposed to take place last week but was postponed by a snowstorm. He pleaded guilty to all the charges in the grand jury indictment, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The charges included murder, murder as a hate crime, and hate-motivated domestic terrorism, which carries an automatic sentence of life without parole. Gendron also pleaded guilty to wounding the three people who survived the attack.

Gendron, who was handcuffed and wore an orange jumpsuit, showed little emotion throughout the hearing, according to the AP. He answered "yes" and "guilty" as the judge referred to each victim by name and asked whether Gendron had killed each victim because of their race.

"I am aware that Payton Gendron intends to plead guilty to the complete indictments, all 25 counts of guilty, and waive his right to appeal. The judge will have no option but to sentence to life without parole," Buffalo attorney John Elmore, who represents the families of Kat Massey and Andre Mackniel, previously told Buffalo radio station WBFO.

At the time, Elmore said the move to plead guilty was likely designed as a bid try to escape the death penalty.

"The main goal of any defense attorney when there's overwhelming evidence of guilt like this is to save their client's life," he said. "And I can't help but to imagine that this plea of guilty is motivated by Gendron's desire to save his life and his attorney's desire to save his life."

Attorney Terrance Connors, who also represents families of the victims, told the radio station that his team also expected Gendron to plead guilty to all charges.

"He's going to plead guilty to the 25 counts in the indictment. And I assume that the sentence will be life imprisonment without parole," Connors said.

Besides the state case, Gendron is also facing 27 counts of federal charges. The U.S. Justice Department has not revealed whether it intends to seek the death penalty in this case.

Police had described the shooting as "racially motivated violent extremism" after 11 of the 13 victims were revealed to be Black. Investigators said Gendron, who was then 18, had driven some 200 miles from his home in Conklin to ensure he found Black people to target. His victims were aged between 32 and 86.

Gendron was arrested in the store's parking lot. Earlier the same day, he posted documents online which espoused white supremacist views and suggested he had been planning the attack for months.

The gunman, who wore combat-style armor, live-streamed the attack from a helmet-mounted camera on the social media platform Twitch. The company told the AP in a statement that it stopped the video stream "less than two minutes" after the attack began.

Gendron has been held without bail since the shooting.