A white gunman in army gear shot and killed 10 individuals at a Buffalo grocery store within the US state of New York on Saturday, in what authorities referred to as an act of “racially motivated violent extremism”.

The location of the mass taking pictures, Tops Pleasant Market, is positioned within the coronary heart of Buffalo’s Black group.

The suspect, who appeared to have acted alone, drove to Buffalo from his house a number of hours away armed with an assault-style rifle.

Shocked residents gathered on Sunday at vigils and church companies to mourn and pay tribute to the victims.

Here’s what we all know thus far:

Who’s the shooter?

Police have recognized the gunman as Payton Gendron, of Conklin, New York in the US. The white 18-year-old drove from the small city positioned about 320 kilometres (200 miles) southeast of Buffalo and started taking pictures within the car parking zone.

He surrendered and dropped the gun with coaxing from the officers after the taking pictures.

Gendron was sporting a helmet digicam, via which he livestreamed the taking pictures to a small viewers on Twitch for a number of minutes earlier than the platform minimize off his feed.

The rifle used within the assault was bought legally, however the magazines used for ammunition weren’t allowed to be bought in New York.

After the taking pictures, Gendron appeared earlier than a choose in a paper medical robe and was arraigned on a homicide cost. He has entered a plea of not responsible and is scheduled to return to courtroom on Might 19.

What was the motive behind the assault?

Officers are investigating the taking pictures as a racially motivated hate crime.

“This was pure evil. It was straight-up racially motivated hate crime from any individual exterior of our group, exterior of the Metropolis of Good neighbours … coming into our group and making an attempt to inflict that evil upon us,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia mentioned at a information briefing on Saturday.

The FBI is investigating the taking pictures as each a “hate crime and racially motivated violent extremism”.

Screenshots purporting to be from the stay Twitch broadcast seem to indicate a racial epithet scrawled on the rifle used within the assault, in addition to the quantity 14, a possible reference to a white supremacist slogan.

A 180-page manifesto circulated extensively on-line and believed to have been authored by Gendron outlined “The Nice Substitute Idea” – a racist conspiracy idea that white individuals are being changed by minorities within the US and different international locations.

The doc outlined racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic beliefs, amongst which was a want to drive all individuals not of European descent from the US.

One other doc circulating on-line that appeared to have been written by Gendron sketched out a to-do record for the assault, together with cleansing the gun and testing the livestream.

Authorities have declined to formally touch upon the manifesto.

What does the preliminary investigation say?

A regulation enforcement official instructed The Related Press on situation of anonymity that Gendron had threatened to hold out a taking pictures final yr at Susquehanna Valley Excessive College across the time of commencement.

New York State Police mentioned troopers had been referred to as to the Conklin college on June 8, 2021, when he was 17 years previous. He was then despatched for psychological well being therapy.

The official mentioned investigators believed Gendron had particularly researched the demographics of the inhabitants across the Tops Pleasant Market.

In a Sunday interview with ABC, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia mentioned that Gendron had been on the town “at the least the day earlier than”.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native, mentioned an investigation into the bloodbath would deal with how Gendron managed to get away with it when he was recognized to authorities and introduced a risk.

“I need to know what individuals knew and once they knew it,” she mentioned, including that social media should even be extra vigilant and keep away from internet hosting a “feeding frenzy” of violent extremist ideology.

Did the shooter have white supremacy hyperlinks?

The preliminary investigation discovered Gendron had repeatedly visited websites espousing white supremacist ideologies and race-based conspiracy theories and extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the person who killed dozens at a summer time camp in Norway in 2011, the regulation enforcement official instructed AP.

US President Joe Biden decried the taking pictures as “abhorrent to the very cloth of this nation” in an announcement on Saturday.

Hochul, the New York governor, mentioned that “these wicked concepts are fermenting on social media – it’s spreading like a virus now,” including {that a} lack of oversight may lead others to emulate the shooter.

Is gun violence frequent within the US?

Mass shootings have grow to be a sadly acquainted scene throughout the US. The Buffalo assault is the newest in a string of high-profile mass shootings within the nation this yr, the second within the state of New York in as many months.

It got here only a month after a taking pictures on a Brooklyn subway wounded 10 and simply over a yr after 10 had been killed in a taking pictures at a Colorado grocery store.

Within the deadliest college taking pictures within the US final yr, 4 college students had been killed and 7 different individuals had been wounded after a teen opened hearth at a highschool in Oxford, Michigan.

In response to the FBI, there have been 345 “energetic shooter incidents” within the US between 2000-2020, leading to greater than 1,024 deaths and 1,828 accidents.