Two years before he opened fire, the gunman accused of killing 10 Black people in Buffalo, began down a digital path that would see him influenced by the Christchurch terrorist attacks, writings in his online diary reveal.
The mass shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, wrote in his Discord diary that he started reading 4chan a few months into the Covid pandemic in 2020 and that he was heavily influenced by the Christchurch terrorist who killed 51 people during his rampage.
He wrote that he originally planned his attack for March 15, the third anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
READ MORE: Christchurch survivor says Buffalo shooting achieves nothing
The diary and its racist, anti-Semitic entries dated to last November included step-by-step descriptions of his assault plans, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made to Buffalo in March, and maps of the store that he drew by hand.
Gendron wrote that he started thinking about “a personal attack against the replacers” a few weeks before an episode in a high school class about a year ago. That episode led to him being taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
The diary states he specifically targeted a store with a predominantly Black clientele, researching spots in Rochester, Syracuse and on Long Island before settling on Buffalo. New York prosecutors say he showed up Saturday wearing body armour and armed with an AR-15-style rifle as a helmet-mounted camera streamed to the internet.
Problems with his gun and then a bout with Covid prevented him from attacking earlier. He theorised, in the diary, that he contracted the virus from a fast-food chicken sandwich poisoned by government agents.
Discord confirmed Wednesday (US local time) that an invitation to access his private writings was sent to others on the platform about a half-hour before Saturday’s shooting.
Some of them accepted.
Tech companies Discord and Twitch, which Gendron used to live-stream the attack, are now under scrutiny for their role as vectors of hate speech.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Wednesday authorized the state’s attorney general to investigate the social media platforms to determine if they have “civil or criminal liability for their role in promoting, facilitating, or providing a platform to plan and promote violence."
Discord said it planned to cooperate with the probe and assist law enforcement.
“Our deepest sympathies are with the victims and their families," the company said.
Twitch CEO Emmett Shear told the Harvard Business Review in an interview earlier on Wednesday that the Amazon-owned platform would continue to “invest heavily in ensuring the safety of everyone on Twitch.”
Attempts to reach, 8kun and 4chan, the two other tech platforms being investigated, were unsuccessful.
Gendron wrote in his diary that those boards were where he started reading up on the racist ideologies that set him on a path to killing non-white, non-Christian people.
When reached for comment, Ron Watkins, the long-time administrator of 8kun and its predecessor, 8chan, said he resigned from the organisation last year and has “no idea what’s going on with that.”
Copies of Gendron’s diary briefly surfaced online after the shooting, along with a 180-page screed attributed to him. Both were laced with white supremacist beliefs echoing a baseless extremist conspiracy theory about a plot to diminish the influence of white people.
Gendron was arraigned over the weekend on a murder charge. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf, and he remains jailed under a suicide watch.
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