Payton Gendron is a sound teenager, with presumably an above-average IQ and a deep obsession with white race conspiracies.
Does Payton Gendron have mental health issues?
The 18-year-old was arrested outside a Tops Friendly Market by a team of Buffalo police officers, minutes after he had taken out 10 black shoppers, and injured three others, in one of New York’s most gruesome massacres of recent times.
He was dressed in tactical protective gear, military grade some might argue.
He wore a helmet with a GoPro attached to it and toted a Bushmaster XM-15 E2S assault rifle, fully loaded with ammunition to carry out his sadistic plot of annihilating as many people of colour as possible.
The merchant he bought it from, Robert Donald from Vintage Firearms in Endicott, New York, reacted to the news of the Buffalo massacre, vehemently stressing that he “knew nothing about it until I got the call from them (the police).”
“I don’t understand why an 18-year-old would even do this. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but I feel terrible about it,” he said in an interview with the New York Times.
Meddled in the midst of reactions to Gendron’s murderous rampage are questions about the state of his mental health. Except, Gendron, himself, was recorded in Discord message logs seen by Swisher Post, where he categorically stated that he had undergone a 20-hour mental health evaluation in 2021, after he wrote in an Economy assignment that he wanted to either commit murder or suicide when he retires.
“I spent 20 hours in a hospital’s emergency room on 528/2021. This was because I answered murder/suicide to the question “what do you want to do when you retire?” on an online assignment in my Economics class. This experience only helped to prove my belief that people, even certified doctors are not concerned about helping you,” he wrote in one message.
Still, as part of preparations for prosecution, the 18-year-old was remanded in custody and will undergo further mental health evaluations.
Here’s proof he planned the Buffalo massacre
The main issue of contention in Gendron’s case, for Buffalo prosecutors, will not be whether the white supremacist committed the crimes, nor if his state of mind was the driving force behind his heinous actions, but whether the Buffalo massacre was premeditated.
Already, Gendron has pleaded not guilty to the single count of first degree murder that was hastily brought against him on Saturday, only a few hours after he had swept the supermarket like a character on an RPG game.
Fortunately, though, the 18-year-old left behind a heap of damning evidence that proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he planned to kill as many black people as possible that fateful day.
His defence may have some ground to hop on with assertions on Gendron’s lack of acquaintance with his victims. But, this may be irrelevant, since, in any case, Gendron documented everything, from the day he purchased his artillery, to the events that unfolded in the days leading up to the Buffalo massacre.
Here are a few facts that prove Gendron’s Buffalo mass shooting was premeditated extracted from his Discord message logs and the 180-page manifesto he posted as motivation for his sordid actions.
He was a proud student of The Great Replacement
Gendron is a proud white supremacist. While he does not align with any political movements on the far right, he wholeheartedly believes in the wild conspiracies derived from the Great Replacement, an ideology perpetuated by racists which claims non-white immigrants are strategically flooded into the West to achieve a political agenda.
Gendron, in his Discord messages and manifesto wrote extensively about the teachings he extracted from the Great Replacement rewrite published by Brenton Tarrant, the New Zealander who, in 2019, killed 51 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch.
In fact, the 18-year-old admits in one message to his Discord followers that, in all likelihood, he would not have taken on this destructive path if he had not live-streamed Tarrant’s mass shooting on 15 March 2019.
“I most likely wouldn’t even know about the real problems in the world if Brenton Tarrant didn’t livestream his attack,” he wrote.
Here is the opening statement of Gendron’s manifesto, where he makes an argument for the Great Replacement:
“If there’s one thing I want you to get from these writings, it’s that White birth rates must change. Everyday the White population becomes fewer in number. To maintain a population the people must achieve a birth rate that reaches replacement fertility levels, in the western world that is about 2.06 births per woman.”
His attack was meant to take place on 15 March 2022
Gendron’s decision to commit the Buffalo massacre came two months later than initially planned. In fact, the 18-year-old, as mentioned on numerous occasions in his Discord messages, had every intention of killing as many black people as possible on the anniversary of the Christchurch mass shooting, as an ode to his inspiration, Tarrant.
The target location was always Tops Friendly Supermarket and this blow-by-blow account on how he was going to execute the massacre was detailed in this message, logged on 1 March 2022.
He had a deep-seeded hatred for black people
Gendron is a firm believer in the Great Replacement conspiracy, which holds wild claims about how jewish people are supposedly behind the political agenda to eradicate Europeans by granting millions of black people legal entry into the West.
In this Discord message, posted on 9 December 2021, Gendron sounds off on the state of the United States (US) and how, effectively, it’s the work of jews to enforce the Great Replacement theory.
Gendron’s next court appearance is expected to take place sometime this week.