Jury selection to begin in federal hate crimes trial over Buffalo supermarket shooting

For Wayne Jones, discussing the horrific supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a White supremacist killed 10 people, including his mother Celestine Chaney, has taken over much of his life these past four years.

He can numbly list talking points for media and gun violence panels. But thinking about her absence each day is one reason why Jones would not want to see the shooter sentenced to death.

“I really think that he should just sit and have to think about it year after year after year and just be miserable,” said Jones, who plans to attend the trial. “When I was younger, I probably was more prone to say ‘kill him.’ But, at this point, I mean, he’s still got well another 20-30 years of appeals.”

Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday in the federal trial in which Payton Gendron faces a potential death penalty. The attack at the Tops Friendly Market in 2022 is believed to be the deadliest hate-motivated shooting targeting Black people by a lone gunman in the last century.

Gendron is facing over two dozen federal hate crime charges and more than a dozen firearms charges. He is already spending life in prison after pleading guilty to state murder charges in a 2023 trial where he tearfully admitted to the crimes and renounced his past views.

His defense team is not going to dispute his guilt. Their sole objective is to ensure Gendron is spared from 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.

On May 14, 2022, a then-18-year-old Gendron drove more than 200 miles from his home in Conklin, a predominantly White and rural town, to Buffalo. He fired around 60 shots from a semiautomatic rifle at employees and shoppers. Video revealed Gendron apologized to a White store worker after shooting him in the leg. He surrendered to police as he exited the supermarket.

Derek Gee/The Buffalo News/AP

February 2023: Buffalo grocery store mass shooter apologizes for racist attack and receives life sentence in state case

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.

Under President Joe Biden, the US Justice Department in 2024 decided to pursue a death sentence. It was the first capital case overseen by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had previously put a moratorium on the death penalty.

Gendron and his legal team relayed that he would only plead guilty in his federal case in exchange for a life sentence. The Justice Department rejected that proposal.

The 2022 shooting stands apart as one of the deadliest acts of anti-Black violence in modern US history. It also reflects a grim reality represented in national bias crime statistics.

Black people have comprised the “no. 1 numerical target” annually since the FBI began collecting data in 1991, hate crime analyst Brian Levin, of the California Association of Human Relations Organizations, said. The record high was 3,670 anti-Black bias incidents in 1996.

According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement agencies reported over 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, he (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.

Everhart, whose son still has shrapnel in his body after being shot in the neck, says hate crime enhancements might be the only deterrent.

“This isn’t a shooting over a robbery or a domestic violence situation. This is domestic terrorism,” Everhart said. “It is important we go after the death penalty in this case. But if he doesn’t end up getting it, I know that justice will be served.”

Garnell Whitfield lost his 86-year-old mother Ruth in the shooting. He has no thoughts on whether capital punishment should be issued because “this is the federal government doing what they deem they have to do.”

He’s spent the past four years honoring his mother’s memory by working with church groups, victims’ rights groups, gun lobbyists and others to address White nationalist movements and racial violence.

Whitfield said he hopes trial testimony reveals more about “the support that he (Gendron) might have had, the radicalization, social media and societal ills that caused people to hate and be violent that are inherent in our society” that preceded the killing.

“Those are the things that I care about,” he said.

对于韦恩·琼斯来说，过去四年里，他的生活大部分时间都花在了讨论发生在纽约州布法罗市的可怕超市枪击案上。在那起枪击案中，一名白人至上主义者杀害了 10 人，其中包括他的母亲塞莱斯廷·钱尼。

他可以麻木地罗列媒体和枪支暴力问题讨论的要点。但每天想到她的缺席，正是琼斯不愿看到枪手被判处死刑的原因之一。

“我真的觉得他应该就这么坐着，年复一年地想着这件事，让自己痛苦不堪，”琼斯说道，他计划旁听审判。“我年轻的时候，可能更想说‘杀了他’。但现在，我的意思是，他还有二三十年的上诉期。”

佩顿·根德龙面临死刑的联邦审判将于周二开始遴选陪审团。这起发生在2022年Tops Friendly Market超市的袭击事件被认为是上个世纪以来由独狼枪手针对黑人实施的最致命的仇恨犯罪枪击案。

根德龙面临二十多项联邦仇恨犯罪指控和十几项枪支指控。此前，他已于2023年认罪，承认犯有州谋杀罪，并在庭审中痛哭流涕地承认罪行，同时放弃了自己过去的仇恨观点，因此被判处终身监禁。

他的辩护团队不会否认他的罪行。他们唯一的目的就是确保根德龙免于死刑。

“佩顿·根德龙终将死于狱中，这是无法改变的事实，”联邦公设辩护律师办公室在一份声明中表示。“在审判中，我们将提供一些对佩顿有利的减刑证据，供陪审团在做出决定时参考。我们所说所做的一切，绝无不敬或对受害者、幸存者及其亲属不敬之意。”

然而，一些受害者家属并不完全反对死刑。

“我从来没想过要支持死刑，也从来没想过要支持死刑。”布法罗市议员泽内塔·埃弗哈特说道。她的儿子扎伊尔在枪击案中幸存一年多后，她才竞选市议员。“那天有十个人以一种极其残忍、可怕、令人痛苦的方式死去。”

她补充说，她的儿子（现年 25 岁）和另外两名幸存者的生活已经发生了不可逆转的改变。

2022年5月14日，当时18岁的根德龙从他位于康克林（一个以白人为主的乡村小镇）的家中驱车200多英里来到布法罗。他用一支半自动步枪向超市员工和顾客开了大约60枪。视频显示，根德龙在击中一名白人店员的腿部后向其道歉。离开超市时，他向警方投降。

德里克·吉/《布法罗新闻报》/美联社

2023年2月：布法罗杂货店枪击案凶手就种族主义袭击道歉，并在州级案件中被判处终身监禁

调查人员发现根德龙过去在社交媒体上发布的帖子和其他文章中，曾策划发动袭击，恐吓非白人和非基督教徒离开美国。他还宣扬毫无根据的“大替换理论”，认为有色人种将通过更高的出生率和移民取代白人。

遇难者均为黑人，年龄在 32 岁至 86 岁之间。除了 Chaney 之外，他们还包括 Geraldine Talley、Katherine Massey、Pearl Young、Andre Mackneil、教堂执事 Heyward Patterson、Ruth Whitfield、Roberta Drury、Margus Morrison 和 Aaron Salter，后者是一名退休的布法罗警察，当时在一家保安公司工作。

在乔·拜登总统的领导下，美国司法部于2024年决定寻求判处死刑。这是时任司法部长梅里克·加兰负责的首例死刑案件，加兰此前曾暂停执行死刑。

根德龙及其律师团队表示，他只会在联邦案件中认罪，以换取终身监禁。司法部拒绝了这一提议。

2022年的枪击事件是美国现代史上最致命的反黑人暴力事件之一，也反映了全国仇恨犯罪统计数据所揭示的严峻现实。

加州人际关系组织协会的仇恨犯罪分析师布莱恩·莱文表示，自联邦调查局1991年开始收集相关数据以来，黑人一直是每年“数量最多的攻击目标”。1996年，针对黑人的仇恨犯罪事件数量创下历史新高，达到3670起。

根据联邦调查局8月份公布的数据，执法机构报告称，2025年针对黑人的仇恨犯罪事件超过2800起，几乎是针对拉丁裔的仇恨犯罪事件数量的三倍。联邦调查局还报告称，2024年至2025年间，仇恨犯罪事件数量下降了7%。

布法罗枪击案和 2015 年南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿教堂枪击案（一名白人枪手杀害了九名黑人教堂信徒）表明，网络激进化也使这起事件成为恐怖主义问题。

“不幸的是，他（根德龙）符合年轻、大多是白人男性进行有针对性的大屠杀的模式，然后通过宣言来为其辩护，这些宣言也是一个持续链条的一部分，通常会提及以前的袭击，但旨在鼓励未来的袭击，”莱文说。

埃弗哈特的儿子曾被枪击颈部，体内至今仍有弹片。他表示，仇恨犯罪加重处罚可能是唯一的威慑手段。

“这不是一起因抢劫或家庭暴力引发的枪击案，而是一起国内恐怖主义事件，”埃弗哈特说。“我们必须在此案中寻求判处死刑。但即便最终他没有被判处死刑，我也知道正义终将得到伸张。”

加内尔·惠特菲尔德在枪击案中失去了他86岁的母亲露丝。对于是否应该判处死刑，他没有意见，因为“这是联邦政府在做他们认为必须做的事情”。

在过去的四年里，他一直与教会团体、受害者权利团体、枪支游说团体和其他人士合作，致力于解决白人民族主义运动和种族暴力问题，以此来纪念他的母亲。

惠特菲尔德表示，他希望审判证词能够揭示更多关于“根德龙可能得到的支持，导致人们仇恨和暴力的激进化、社交媒体以及我们社会固有的社会弊病”的信息，这些都发生在杀戮事件之前。

“这些才是我真正关心的事情，”他说。