le meurtrier Payton Gendron

 

  Residents of the city of Buffalo, New York, are shocked and paid tribute Sunday, May 15, to the ten people killed the day before in a supermarket, most of them African Americans, by a white man in a shooting described by authorities as "a racially motivated hate crime.

"Some of us are very angry," said Pastor T. Anthony Bronner, speaking at a vigil outside the parking lot of the Tops supermarket where a young man, equipped with an assault weapon and a bulletproof vest, fired his weapon Saturday afternoon, May 14, killing ten people and wounding three others.

The majority of the victims were black, as eleven of the victims were black and two were white, in this predominantly African-American neighbourhood of Buffalo, a northern city on the shores of Lake Erie, on the border with Canada.

President Joe Biden will visit on Tuesday, May 17, "to share the pain of a community that lost ten of its own in a horrific and senseless mass killing," the White House announced. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the killing, calling it a "despicable act of racist and violent extremism," his spokesman said Sunday.

Many people went to the scene of the tragedy on Sunday, May 16, praying, laying flowers and chanting the word "unity" while another vigil was held in a church where the mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, said he was "devastated" by this "racist and violent attack".

The criminal is identified as Payton Gendron, 18, who drove more than 200 miles from his home in Conklin in the southern part of the state to carry out this massacre, even conducting "a reconnaissance operation" the day before the events, according to authorities. "How does an 18-year-old boy get a gun?" exclaimed Buffalo-born Derryl Long, who lives in nearby Chautauqua.

"I can't figure out what the hell was going through this man's head, to drive three hours all the way down here to this (supermarket) Tops because he knew it was a black neighbourhood," continued, Mr. Long, 67.