Ajit Karn
New York: A man disrupted the sentencing hearing for the self-declared white supremacist today by lunging towards the shooter who killed 10 Black people in a live-streamed grocery spree in New York State last year.
Payton Gendron, 19, was detained by security personnel during the sad testimony of the victims’ family and was removed out of the courthouse when someone in the crowd charged at him.
The hearing was suspended for a while and then resumed.
Earlier, Gendron was referred to as “a cowardly racist” by Simone Crawley, the 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield’s granddaughter.
The family’s choice of red and black clothing was explained by Kimberly Salter, the widow of security guard Aaron Salter.
She described the colours as “red for the blood he lost for his family and for his town, and black because we are still in mourning.”
In relation to the Buffalo shooting atrocity in May, Gendron had entered a plea of guilty in November to a state charge of domestic terrorism motivated by hatred, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release.
He had Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo as the target because of the significant African-American community in the area, and he had planned the assault for months.
The then-18-year-old left his hometown of Conklin, more than 200 miles (322 kilometres) away, on May 14 with the purpose to murder as many Black people as he could, according to the prosecution.
Before entering the grocery store, Gendron shot four persons in the parking lot, three of whom died, while brandishing an AR-15 assault weapon.
A veteran police officer who was serving as a security guard was one among those slain inside. Prior to being shot and dying himself, he fired multiple bullets at the attacker, according to investigators.
Gendron broadcast the two-minute assault live on the Twitch site while donning a helmet with a camera attached to it.
Ages of the victims varied from 32 to 86. Of the 13 victims that were shot, 11 were Black and 2 were White.
Within hours after the incident, police detained Gendron, and investigators discovered a 180-page dossier outlining his racial justifications for the killing on his computer.
In November, Gendron pleaded guilty to all charges brought against him, including 10 counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm.
He was the first individual in New York to be found guilty of the state’s newly adopted domestic terrorism crime.
