New York, Feb 15 (AFP\/APP):A white supremacist who murdered 10 Black people during a live-streamed supermarket rampage in New York state last year was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday during an emotional hearing that saw a man lunge for the shooter.<\/p>\n
Payton Gendron, 19, had pleaded guilty to a state charge of domestic terrorism motivated by hate over the massacre in Buffalo in May, which carries a mandatory penalty of life without parole.<\/p>\n
The convicted teen, who told the court he was “very sorry” for his actions, still faces dozens of federal hate crime charges that could see him receive the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Gendron had to be escorted out of the courtroom when an audience member rushed at him during emotional statements by relatives of victims.<\/p>\n
The man was restrained and the hearing resumed several minutes later.
\nEarlier, Simone Crawley, the granddaughter of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, called Gendron “a cowardly racist.”<\/p>\n
Gendron planned the attack for months, targeting Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo because of the large African-American population in the surrounding neighborhood.<\/p>\n
On May 14, the then-18-year-old drove from his hometown of Conklin, more than 200 miles (322 kilometers) away, with the intention of killing as many Black people as possible, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Wearing heavy body armor and wielding an AR-15 assault rifle, he shot four people in the store’s parking lot, three of them fatally, before entering the grocery store.<\/p>\n
Among those killed inside was a retired police officer working as a security guard. He fired several shots at the assailant before being shot and killed himself, police said.<\/p>\n
Gendron wore a helmet with a video camera attached and live-streamed the two-minute attack on the platform Twitch.<\/p>\n
The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86. Eleven of the 13 people shot were Black and two were white.<\/p>\n
Police arrested Gendron within hours of the attack and investigators found a 180-page document on his computer that laid out his racist motivations for the massacre.<\/p>\n
He had made references to the “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy premise on the far-right that claims people of color are being brought into the United States to replace white Americans.<\/p>\n
Gendron admitted all the charges against him in November, including 10 counts of murder in the first degree, three attempted murder charges and one count of criminal possession of a weapon.<\/p>\n
He was the first person in New York to be convicted of the state’s domestic terrorism charge, which was introduced in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York, Feb 15 (AFP\/APP):A white supremacist who murdered 10 Black people during a live-streamed supermarket rampage in New York state last year was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday during an emotional hearing that saw a man lunge for the shooter. Payton Gendron, 19, […]<\/p>\n
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