BUFFALO — A sentencing for the gunman in a racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket last year was dramatically interrupted and the courtroom cleared on Wednesday morning after a man lunged at the defendant.
The judge, Susan Eagan, emptied the courtroom and reconvened the hearing a short time later, pleading for decorum while saying she understood the anger toward the gunman, Payton Gendron. “We are all better than that,” she said.
Before Mr. Gendron hears his sentence, families of the victims are testifying as to the insurmountable damage done by the attack on May 14, in which 10 people were killed, all of them Black, and three people injured.
“You are a cowardly racist,” said Simone Crowley, whose grandmother Ruth Whitfield, 86, was killed in the shooting. She asked for accountability for others who aided or turned a blind eye to Mr. Gendron’s growing radicalization.
“You recorded the last moments of our loved ones’ lives to garner support for your hateful cause, but you immortalize them instead,” Ms. Crowley continued. “We are extremely aware that you are not a lone wolf, but a part of a larger organized network of domestic terrorists. And to that network, we say we as a people are unbreakable.”
At one point, a member of the court audience had to be restrained after he lunged at Mr. Gendron, leading him to be removed from the courtroom and the sentencing stopped.
Mr. Gendron pleaded guilty in November to 15 counts, including 10 counts of first-degree murder and a single count of domestic terrorism motivated by hate, which carries a penalty of life imprisonment without parole. Judge Eagan was expected to issue her sentence after the victim-impact statements, in a packed courtroom at the Erie County courthouse.
Last week, The Buffalo News reported that the gunman was also expected to make a statement, including an apology to victims’ families. Inside the courtroom, Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo and Police Commissioner Joseph A. Gramaglia sat amid a heavy police presence.
Mr. Gendron, an avowed white supremacist, live-streamed the attack and specifically chose the Tops market in east Buffalo because it had a large Black clientele.
In the days and months before his massacre, the gunman — who was 18 at the time — had written in exhaustive and hate-filled detail about his plans, which he said were inspired by other racist killers in recent history.
The mass shooting was a stark reminder of the rise of white supremacy in America as well as of the limitations of state gun laws in an age when the Supreme Court has allowed broad protections for gun owners, including striking down a New York law in June that placed strict limits on carrying guns.
Shortly after the Buffalo attack, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a series of measures to once again strengthen New York’s gun laws while investigating social media platforms where the gunman was radicalized. (That new gun law has, thus far, withstood legal challenges.)
Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, also mandated that New York State Police use the state’s so-called red-flag law to seek emergency orders from judges to seize weapons from people who are believed to pose a threat to themselves or others.
Mr. Gendron was never flagged by such systems, however, despite the fact that he had voiced a desire to commit a murder-suicide while he was high school student in 2021, and was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation. He was soon released.
The planning and barbarity of his plans became apparent on May 14: After driving to Buffalo from his home in Conklin, N.Y., some 200 miles from Buffalo, he wore body armor and camouflage during his shooting spree.
He also posted a lengthy screed riddled with racist writings and expressing admiration for a white supremacist ideology known as replacement theory, which posits the false idea that white people, who make up a majority of America’s population, are being supplanted by minorities.
His video feed of the attack was briefly online, before being shut down by social media companies. Still, the Buffalo attack remains one of the nation’s deadliest racist shootings, joining a list that includes the killing of nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015; an antisemitic rampage in Pittsburgh, at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 where 11 people were killed; and an attack at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 in which more than 20 people were killed by a man who had expressed hatred of Latinos.
Mr. Gendron is also charged with federal hate crimes and weapons violations, some of which could carry the death penalty if the Justice Department decided to seek it. Those charges are still pending.
On Wednesday, however, the families of the slain were deeply emotional in describing the loss they felt, some angry, others struggling to find forgiveness for the killer, who gazed at many of them impassively as they spoke.
“Only a weak human takes out their pain on others,” said Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire was injured, but survived. “The world says you have to forgive in order to move on. But I stand before you today to say that will never happen.”
Kimberly Salter’s husband, Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer, did not survive: he was shot and killed in the attack. Ms. Salter quoted the Bible as she stood just feet from Mr. Gendron, who wore an orange jumpsuit and spectacles.
“You will reap,” she said, “what you sow.”
Jazmine Hughes contributed reporting.