Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old accused of killing 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo on Saturday, wrote in increasing detail of his plans to murder dozens of Black people in statements posted online over the past five months, according to a compilation of messages by a writer who identified himself as Gendron.
A review of more than 600 pages of messages by The Washington Post found that Gendron resolved in December to kill those he slurred as "replacers," and decided in February to target Buffalo's Tops grocery store based on its local African American population. In March, he performed a reconnaissance-style trip to monitor the store's security and map out its aisles, the messages show. When a store guard confronted him about why he had repeatedly entered that day, Gendron made excuses and fled in what he described as "a close call," the messages state.