Buffalo suspect was a loner in high school, wrote alarming messages before attack

In the waning days of Payton Gendron’s senior year at Susquehanna Valley High School, which was altered by COVID-19, he logged on to a virtual learning program in economics class that asked: “What do you plan to do when you retire?” “Murder-suicide,” he typed. Despite his protests that it was all a joke, the bespectacled 17year-old, who had long been viewed by classmates as a loner with good grades, was questioned by state police over the possible threat and then taken into custody and to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation under a state mental health law.

But a day and a half later, he was released. And two weeks after that, he was allowed to participate in graduation festivities, including riding in the senior parade, where he was photographed atop a convertible driven by his father and festooned with yellow-and-blue balloons.

That account of his brush with the law last spring, according to authorities and other people familiar with what happened, emphasized the same point school officials made in a message to parents at the time: An investigation found no specific, credible threat against the school or any individual from that sign of trouble.

Now, the episode is seen as a missed opportunity to uncover a sinister side of Mr. Gendron that he kept hidden from those around him. He became radicalized online, bought a Bushmaster rifle, travelled three hours to Buffalo and went on what authorities say was a racist, livestreamed shooting rampage Saturday in a supermarket that killed 10 Black people.

Now 18, he was arraigned on a state murder charge on the weekend and a court-appointed public defender entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf. He remained jailed under suicide watch as federal prosecutors contemplate hate-crime charges.

Even as the FBI swarmed the home where the teen lived with his parents and two younger brothers, neighbours and classmates in this mostly white community of 5,000 near the New York State-Pennsylvania line say they saw no sign of the kind of racist rhetoric seen in a 180-page online diatribe purportedly written by him.

In it, he describes in minute detail how he researched ZIP codes with the highest concentrations of Black people, surveilled the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, and carried out the assault to terrorize all non-white, non-Christian people into leaving the country.

Classmates described the teen as a quiet, studious boy who got high marks but seemed out of place in recent years, turning to online streaming games, a fascination with guns and ways to grab attention from his peers.

“He talked about how he didn’t like school because he didn’t have friends. He would say he was lonely,” said classmate Matthew Casado, who graduated with Mr. Gendron last year.

A new, 589-page document of online diary postings emerged Monday that authorities have attributed to the teen. In it, he describes his preparations for the Buffalo supermarket shooting in detail, writing at one point that he considered attacking a predominantly Black elementary school instead. He also recounted how he chased down a neighbourhood cat, stabbed and decapitated it with a hatchet, took a picture and then buried it in the backyard.

“Another bad experience was when I had to go to a hospitals ER because I said the word’s murder/ suicide’ to an online paper in economics class,” said one entry.

“I got out of it because I stuck with the story that I was getting out of class and I just stupidly wrote that down. That is the reason I believe I am still able to purchase guns.

“It was not a joke, I wrote that down because that’s what I was planning to do.”