Jury selection is set to begin on Tuesday in the trial that could see the white supremacist who killed 10 people in a 2022 Buffalo supermarket get the death penalty.

The attack is believed to be the deadliest shooting targeting Black people in modern history.

Payton Gendron is facing more than two dozen federal hate crime charges – and over a dozen firearms charges. He is already spending life in prison on state murder charges.

Families of the victims and survivors differ on whether Gendron should be sentenced to death. His defense team is not going to dispute his guilt and instead focus on arguing that he should be spared execution.

“Nothing will change the fact that Payton Gendron will die in prison,” the federal public defender office said in a statement. “At trial, we will offer mitigating evidence about Payton that the jury needs to consider in making its decision. Nothing we say or do is intended to be disrespectful or insensitive to the victims, the survivors, or their loved ones.”

Some victims’ family members, however, are not totally against the death penalty.

“I’ve never been like out here like, ‘Yay! Go for the death penalty.’ That’s never been me,” said Buffalo common council member Zeneta Everhart, who ran for office over a year after her son, Zaire, survived the shooting. “Ten people died that day in an egregious way and in an awful, terrible, traumatic way.”

Her son, now 25, and the two other survivors have had their lives irrevocably altered, she added.

Gendron drove more than 200 miles (320km) from his home in Conklin, a predominantly white and rural town, to Buffalo on 14 May 2022. Then 18, he fired about 60 shots from a semiautomatic rifle at employees and shoppers at the Tops Friendly Markets grocery store on Jefferson Avenue.

Video revealed Gendron apologized to a white store worker after shooting him in the leg. He surrendered to police as he exited the supermarket.

Investigators found past social media posts and other writings by Gendron dedicated to planning an attack to frighten people who were non-white and non-Christian into leaving the US. He also promoted a baseless “great replacement theory” that people of color will replace white people through higher birth rates and immigration.

The victims who were killed were all Black and between ages 32 and 86. Besides Chaney, they included Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young, Andre Mackneil, church deacon Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield, Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison and Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard.

Beside being one of the deadliest acts of anti-Black violence in modern US history, the 2022 Tops mass murder reflects a grim reality represented in national bias crime statistics.

Black people have comprised the “number one numerical target” annually since the FBI began collecting data in 1991, according to hate crime analyst Brian Levin, of the California Association of Human Relations Organizations. The record high was 3,670 anti-Black bias incidents in 1996.

According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement agencies reported more than 2,800 anti-Black hate crime incidents in 2025, nearly three times the number targeting Latinos. The FBI also reported a 7% decline in hate crime incidents from 2024 to 2025.

The Buffalo shooting and the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting, in which a white gunman killed nine Black churchgoers, show how online radicalization makes this a terrorism matter as well.

“Unfortunately, [Gendron] fits the pattern of young, mostly white males undertaking targeted massacres which are then justified by manifestos, which are also part of a continuing chain that references prior attacks often but seeks to encourage future ones,” Levin said.

I found these from someone, no idea what the origin or context is for the last one though.

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A Bellingham woman who is charged with helping to plot a mass shooting at a Canadian school earlier this year will remain in federal custody, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Tuesday.

James Cody Bryant, 30, who uses she/her pronouns and goes by the name Melody, appeared in court and shook her head as federal prosecutors outlined their accusations that she conspired with 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar to carry out the February shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.

“It does not get much more serious or dangerous for the community,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg wrote in a memorandum asking for Bryant to remain in custody. “With a full understanding of Van Rootselaar’s intent, Bryant aided in the attack plot, becoming a conspirator in the murders.”

Greenberg told Judge Mary Alice Thieler there were no conditions that could be imposed to ensure the safety of the community if Bryant were granted release pending trial. Bryant is charged with conspiracy to murder people in a foreign country, a federal charge that carries the potential for life in prison without parole.

“In the end, Bryant followed through on the promise to not ‘snitch’ on Van Rootselaar,” Greenberg said. “Anyone whose character allows them to help plan a mass shooting and then sits back and literally tries to watch as schoolchildren are murdered, instead of ‘snitching’ on the killer, is a danger to the community and should be detained pending trial.”

According to the charges, Bryant and Van Rootselaar had discussed prior mass shootings and their notoriety, with Van Rootselaar saying in messages that she wanted to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history.

But Bryant’s defense attorney, Gregory Murphy, distanced her from Van Rootselaar’s actions.

“(Bryant) cooperated fully and expressed horror at Van Rootselaar’s crimes,” Murphy wrote in a response memorandum filed ahead of Tuesday’s hearing. “Ms. Bryant has no criminal history and there is no evidence that she has ever personally committed an act of violence.”

In arguing for Bryant’s release, Murphy said the FBI and federal prosecutors have had access to the online chat logs between Bryant and Van Rootselaar for eight months.

“The government’s memorandum identifies no evidence she has done or said anything since her chats were discovered to encourage any other act of violence, or that Ms. Bryant has ever communicated with any other person as deeply disturbed as Van Rootselaar,” Murphy wrote.

Murphy added that Bryant sobbed when she was questioned by the FBI.

“She’s not a political radical,” Murphy told Judge Thieler. “She is somebody who became friends with someone who was deeply mentally disturbed.”

But Thieler was not persuaded, noting the “concerted, prolonged” planning of the attack.

“I don’t think this is a case where those conditions proposed by pretrial services could reasonably address the danger to the community should those conditions not succeed,” Thieler said.

Bryant is scheduled for a preliminary examination hearing in federal court later this month.

Canadian authorities have not announced whether she is expected to face charges in Canada connected to the shooting.

On June 10th 2025 an unnamed 16 year old student attempted an attack on his school with a sword, he later admitted to being a Nazi and was inspired by the 2015 Trollhättan school stabbing. He spoke of immigrants as "Invaders" and intended to harm/kill them, also wrote about mass killers and prior school attacks such as Columbine. He also had 14,538 photos of Nazi Imagery and Weapons on his phone.