An 18-year-old man accused of killing 10 Black people and injuring three others in a racist attack at a New York grocery store was indicted by a grand jury, the Erie County District Attorney's Office announced.
Payton Gendron was indicted Wednesday on charges of domestic terrorism motivated by hate and 10 counts of first-degree murder. The indictment comes more than two weeks after the May 14 shooting at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo.
The 25-count indictment also contains charges of murder and attempted murder as a hate crime and weapons possession.
Gendron is scheduled to be arraigned in an Erie County court Thursday afternoon. It's not clear if he has obtained an attorney.
He was initially charged with one count of first-degree murder after police said he opened fire in the parking lot, fatally shooting three people and wounding a store employee. The suspect, dressed in tactical gear, continued the rampage inside where he was confronted by a security guard, Aaron Salter Jr., 55.
Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer, returned fire but the rounds didn’t appear to penetrate the suspect’s ballistic gear. Salter was fatally shot.
Responding Buffalo officers engaged the suspect in the store’s vestibule and took him into custody.
Thirteen people — 11 of whom are Black and two who are white — were shot during the massacre, which the suspect streamed on the social media platform Twitch. A Twitch spokesperson said the video was removed "less than two minutes after the violence started."
During the investigation, authorities discovered a document apparently written by the suspect. It said he targeted Buffalo because it was the city with the most Black residents in closest proximity to his home.
Attorney General Merrick Garland had said that the Department of Justice was investigating the shooting as a “hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism.”
