Anger Pours Out Ahead of Buffalo Shooter's Sentencing

An audience member tried to rush at Payton Gendron
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 15, 2023 10:26 AM CST
Buffalo Shooter Hustled Out of Court After Man Rushes Him
Payton Gendron is led into the courtroom for a hearing at Erie County Court, in Buffalo, NY, on May 19, 2022.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

The sentencing hearing for Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron reached a fever-pitch on Wednesday, with the 19-year-old being removed from court at one point after a man rushed at him. NBC News reports Gendron was sentenced to life without parole for killing 10 Black people in a racially motivated May 2022 supermarket attack. But first came the victim impact statements: The AP reports that as Barbara Massey Mapps "excoriated" him for killing her 72-year-old sister, Katherine Massey, a man in the audience lunged at Gendron before being restrained. "You don’t know what we’re going through," the man shouted as court officers led him out of the Erie County Courthouse in New York.

Fox News reports that Massey at one point told Gendron, "I want personally to choke you ... You are going to come to our city and decide you don't like Black people. Man, you don't know a damn thing about Black people." CNN reports Massey's was the sixth impact statement of the morning, and it observed that the testimony had "a clear impact on Gendron," who was seen crying. One of those statements came from Kimberly Salter, widow of security guard Aaron Salter, who worked at the Tops Friendly Market. She told Gendron her family wore “red for the blood that he shed for his family and for his community, and black because we are still grieving."

NBC News reports Gendron spoke to the victims' families before being sentenced: "I did a terrible thing that day. I shot and killed people because they were Black. Looking back now, I can’t believe I actually did it. I believe what I read online and acted out the hate and now I can’t take it back but I wish I could." (More Buffalo shooting stories.)

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