The white man accused of slaughtering 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was scheduled to appear in court Thursday as authorities continue to investigate the possibility of hate crime or terrorism charges.
Payton Gendron livestreamed the attack from a helmet camera before surrendering to police outside the grocery store. Shortly before the attack last Saturday, he posted hundreds of pages of writings to online discussion groups where he detailed his plans for the assault and his racist motivation.
At his initial court appearance last week, Gendron’s court-appointed lawyer entered a plea of “not guilty” on his behalf.
The suspect in Saturday’s massacre allegedly believed in the “great replacement theory” and specifically targeted Black shoppers.
The FBI previously said the massacre would be investigated as a hate crime.
"I want to be clear, for my part, from everything we know, this was a targeted attack, a hate crime, and an act of racially motivated violent extremism,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “While there remain a lot of unknowns, as there always do in an investigation at this stage, what is absolutely certain is that we at the FBI are committed to comprehensively and aggressively investigating Saturday’s attack.”
