On Saturday May 14, 2022, in the United States, a man opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and injuring three others, two of them seriously. The authorities denounce a new racist attack by a white supremacist.
An investigation was opened by the FBI, which, during a press conference, claimed to be studying the track at the same time « a hate crime » and a “cases of racially motivated violent extremism”.
Here is what we know, on this Sunday, May 15, 2022, about this shooting.
10 people killed, 3 injured including two seriously
The shooting took place Saturday afternoon at the « Tops » supermarket in the city of Buffalo. Buffalo Police Chief Joseph Gramaglia said the killer, armed with an assault rifle, first shot four people in the supermarket parking lot, killing three of them, before moving on. enter trade and commit carnage.
There, a security guard, a retired policeman, shot at the assailant but the latter, protected by a bulletproof vest, was not injured and shot the guard.
Eleven of those targeted were black people and two were white, in this predominantly African-American neighborhood of Buffalo.
The alleged killer: an 18-year-old white supremacist
When the police arrived on the scene, the young man turned his weapon against him, at the level of his neck, before surrendering to the police, continued Commissioner Gramaglia.
Local police and judicial authorities, taken up by several American media, present the alleged shooter as an 18-year-old white man. It was equipped with a « assault weapon », a bulletproof vest, a military-style outfit, a helmet and a camera to broadcast his crime live on the internet.
According to information from several American media, taken up by France TV Washington on Twitter, the shooter reportedly broadcast the shooting live on the Twitch platform and declared himself there as a white supremacist and anti-Semite.
the New York Times also reports that the shooter allegedly broadcast a » manifest « racist content of 180 pages on the internet. The young man would expose his plan to kill black people and would base himself on supremacist theories like the « great replacement » and would repeatedly refer to attacks like those committed by Brenton Tarrant against two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, killing 51 and injuring 49.
The local newspaper buffalo news also revealed that a terribly offensive, racist and taboo word in the United States for black people had been painted in white on the barrel of the gun.
An attack broadcast on Twitch
The assailant, who was carrying a camera, began to broadcast his crime on the Twitch platform, which declared itself » devastated « and promised a zero tolerance against all forms of violence”.
According to the social network, the content has been removed » two minutes « after it started broadcasting, the assailant’s account was « permanently suspended » and “all accounts likely to rebroadcast this content are under surveillance”.
Screenshots of the shooting have been posted on social media, some appearing to show the shooter with a weapon, standing over a body in the supermarket, Reuters reports.
Joe Biden denounces a “terrorism” of “repulsive white nationalist ideology”
On the night of Saturday to Sunday, US President Joe Biden published a press release, available on the White House website, in which he clearly denounces “a racially motivated hate crime” and one “internal act of terrorism”, perpetrated « in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology ».
It’s about a “atrocious killing by a white supremacist”, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul thundered on Twitter.
For his part, the mayor of Buffalo, an African-American, Byron Brown, denounced the fact that the killer had traveled several hours to commit his crime in a predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo.
This killing recalls two others: a racist massacre on August 3, 2019 when a 21-year-old far-right man killed 23 people, including eight Mexicans and “Hispanic” people in El Paso, Texas; and when on June 17, 2015 a white supremacist killed nine African-American worshipers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.