Buffalo: racist killer sentenced to life in prison 

Europe 1 with AFP 7:11 p.m., February 15, 2023

A young white supremacist who killed ten black people in May in a supermarket in Buffalo, in the north of the United States, was sentenced on Wednesday to an irreducible sentence of life in prison after a hearing punctuated by cries of rage and pain.

Payton Gendron, 19, pleaded guilty in November to racist murders and acts of terrorism in New York State justice and appeared, for the first time, before the relatives of his victims.

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A "dumb ideology"

These, nine months after this carnage which deeply shocked the United States, let their distress burst out, a man even tried to throw himself on the young man, causing a short hearing interruption.

But widows, mothers, daughters and uncles of people whose lives were cut off in the supermarket also made strong calls not to give in to hatred.

"We all know the motives for your racist crime, but we are here to tell you that you failed," said Simone Crawley, whose grandmother Ruth Whitfield died while shopping.

"Despite our wounds, we won't let you win this war."

“There is no place for you or your stupid, hateful and evil ideology in a civilized society,” added Judge Susan Eagan, after having long denounced the racist past of the United States.

"There can be no pity for you, no understanding, no second chances," she added before pronouncing the sentence, incompressible: "You will never see the light of day again as a free man ."

In a short intervention, Payton Gendron assured to be "sorry for the pain" that he caused.

The killer regrets his decisions

"I can't say how much I regret all the decisions that led me to do a terrible thing on May 14, when I shot and killed people just because they were black. I believed in things read online and acted out of racist hatred," "I don't want to be an inspiration to anyone," he added.

On May 14, after months of preparation, he went to a Buffalo supermarket in combat gear, armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a camera broadcasting his actions live on the internet. .

He had moved methodically through the parking lot and then into the store, shooting at customers and employees.

And had left ten dead, aged 32 to 86, and three injured.

In his messages and a racist, supremacist and conspiratorial manifesto, Payton Gendron had written, several months before the massacre, that he wanted to kill black people and that he was targeting a poor and isolated neighborhood in Buffalo because of its high proportion of black people. 'African Americans.

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racist manifesto

He had also made a reconnaissance trip before the massacre in Buffalo, 300 km north of his home.

The carnage had caused astonishment in the United States, doubled ten days later by another massacre with a semi-automatic rifle perpetrated by an 18-year-old young man, who had killed 19 children and two teachers in a school in Uvalde, Texas.

These killings, the list of which has since continued to grow, have revived the recurring debate on a lack of regulation of firearms in the United States.

The Gun Violence Archive site has already identified, since January 1, six gun dramas that have left at least four dead, and 71 shootings that have left at least four injured.

The United States authorizing double prosecution, Payton Gendron is also charged with “racist crimes” by federal justice, which has not ruled out at this stage to request the death penalty.