Jury selection to begin in federal hate crimes trial over Buffalo, N.Y.,
supermarket shooting
[October 13, 2026]
By TERRY TANG
For Wayne Jones, discussing the horrific supermarket shooting in
Buffalo, N.Y., in which a white supremacist killed 10 people, including
his mother Celestine Chaney, has taken over much of his life these past
four years.
He can numbly list talking points for media and gun violence panels. But
thinking about her absence each day is one reason why Jones would not
want to see the shooter sentenced to death.
“I really think that he should just sit and have to think about it year
after year after year and just be miserable," said Jones, who plans to
attend the trial. “When I was younger, I probably was more prone to say
‘kill him.’ But, at this point, I mean, he's still got well another
20-30 years of appeals."
Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday in the federal trial in which
Payton Gendron faces a potential death penalty. The attack at the Tops
Friendly Market in 2022 is believed to be the deadliest hate-motivated
shooting targeting Black people by a lone gunman in the last century.
Gendron is facing over two dozen federal hate crime charges and more
than a dozen firearms charges. He is already spending life in prison
after pleading guilty to state murder charges in a 2023 trial where he
tearfully admitted to the crimes and renounced his past views.
His defense team is not going to dispute his guilt. Their sole objective
is to ensure Gendron is spared from execution.
“Nothing will change the fact that Payton Gendron will die in prison,”
the federal public defender office said in a statement. "At trial, we
will offer mitigating evidence about Payton that the jury needs to
consider in making its decision. Nothing we say or do is intended to be
disrespectful or insensitive to the victims, the survivors, or their
loved ones.”
Some victims' family members, however, are not totally against the death
penalty.
“I’ve never been like out here like, ‘Yay! Go for the death penalty.’
That’s never been me,” said Buffalo Common Council member Zeneta
Everhart, who ran for office over a year after her son, Zaire, survived
the shooting. “Ten people died that day in an egregious way and in an
awful, terrible, traumatic way."
Her son, now 25, and the two other survivors have had their lives
irrevocably altered, she added.
How racist conspiracy theories played a role in the attack
On May 14, 2022, a then-18-year-old Gendron drove over 200 miles (320
kilometers) from his home in Conklin, a predominantly white and rural
town, to Buffalo. He fired around 60 shots from a semiautomatic rifle at
employees and shoppers. Video revealed Gendron apologized to a white
store worker after shooting him in the leg. He surrendered to police as
he exited the supermarket.
Investigators found past social media posts and other writings by
Gendron dedicated to planning an attack to frighten people who were
non-white and non-Christian into leaving the U.S. He also promoted a
baseless “great replacement theory” that people of color will replace
white people through higher birth rates and immigration.
The victims who were killed were all Black and between ages 32 and 86.
Besides Chaney, they included Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Pearl
Young, Andre Mackneil, church deacon Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield,
Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison and Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo
police officer who was working as a security guard.
[to top of second column]
|
Payton Gendron, center, listens as he is sentenced, Feb 15, 2023, in
Buffalo, N.Y. (Derek Gee/The Buffalo News via AP, Pool, File)
Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. Justice Department in 2024
decided to pursue a death sentence. It was the first capital case
overseen by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had
previously put a moratorium on the death penalty.
Gendron and his legal team relayed that he would only plead guilty
in his federal case in exchange for a life sentence. The Justice
Department rejected that proposal.
Anti-Black crimes still lead in hate crime data
The 2022 shooting stands apart as one of the deadliest acts of
anti-Black violence in modern U.S. history. It also reflects a grim
reality represented in national bias crime statistics.
Black people have comprised the “no. 1 numerical target” annually
since the FBI began collecting data in 1991, hate crime analyst
Brian Levin, of the California Association of Human Relations
Organizations, said. The record high was 3,670 anti-Black bias
incidents in 1996.
According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement agencies
reported over 2,800 anti-Black hate crime incidents in 2025, nearly
three times the number targeting Latinos. The FBI also reported a 7%
decline in hate crime incidents from 2024 to 2025.
The Buffalo shooting and the 2015 Charleston, S.C., church shooting,
in which a white gunman killed nine Black churchgoers, show how
online radicalization makes this a terrorism matter as well.
“Unfortunately, he (Gendron) fits the pattern of young, mostly white
males undertaking targeted massacres which are then justified by
manifestos, which are also part of a continuing chain that
references prior attacks often but seeks to encourage future ones,”
Levin said.
Everhart, whose son still has shrapnel in his body after being shot
in the neck, says hate crime enhancements might be the only
deterrent.
“This isn't a shooting over a robbery or a domestic violence
situation. This is domestic terrorism,” Everhart said. “It is
important we go after the death penalty in this case. But if he
doesn't end up getting it, I know that justice will be served.”
Garnell Whitfield lost his 86-year-old mother Ruth in the shooting.
He has no thoughts on whether capital punishment should be issued
because “this is the federal government doing what they deem they
have to do.”
He's spent the past four years honoring his mother's memory by
working with church groups, victims' rights groups, gun lobbyists
and others to address white nationalist movements and racial
violence.
Whitfield said he hopes trial testimony reveals more about “the
support that he (Gendron) might have had, the radicalization, social
media and societal ills that caused people to hate and be violent
that are inherent in our society” that preceded the killing.
“Those are the things that I care about,” he said.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
