BY Bolanle Olabimtan
Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white man, has shot dead 10 people in a black neighbourhood of New York state.
Three others were wounded in an attack described as racially motivated.
Eleven of the victims were Black, and two were white, according to officials.
Gendron was said to have stormed Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo on Saturday to launch the attack, which he live-streamed on the internet.
He was arrested after the shooting spree.
Joseph Gramaglia, Buffalo police commissioner, said the suspect killed nine customers and a retired police officer working as an armed security guard.
“He exited his vehicle. He was very heavily armed. He had tactical gear. He had a tactical helmet on. He had a camera that he was live-streaming what he was doing,” Gramaglia said.
Stephen Belongia, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo field office, told reporters that the shooting is being investigated as “both a hate crime and a case of racially motivated violent extremism”.
US President Joe Biden condemned what he called an “abhorrent” act.
Gendron has now been arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder, which carries a sentence of life without parole. He is being held without bail.
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