The day before 18-year-old white supremacist Payton Gendron claims to have killed 10 people in the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, store manager Shonnell Harris Teague kicked him out of the supermarket.
Speaking to ABC7 News, Teague described how Gendron was begging outside the store on Friday, in the same combat outfit he donned when he allegedly opened fire — targeting black people — the next day. When he walked in a few hours later, he continued to badger customers, Teague said, and she asked him to leave, which he did without incident. “I asked him if he could please leave the store – you’ll have to stand outside.”
Son of Buffalo Victim: Killer is ‘a product of the system’
She saw him again the next day, wearing the same camouflage outfit but wielding his modified automatic rifle. “I see him with his gear on and his gun and how it was all tied up,” Teague said. “And he shot a man who was already, I don’t know if the man was moving. He must have shot him again.”
Then Teague ran for her life.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told ABC News on Monday that if the teen had evaded his arrest, he would have continued his frenzy. Many have wondered why he was not shot by the police and wondered if a black offender might have walked out of the store alive.
“We have found information that if he escaped the… [Tops] supermarket, he had plans to continue his attack,” Gramaglia told ABC. “He had plans to drive down Jefferson Ave to shoot more black people…possibly go to another store” [or] Place.”
On Sunday, as crowds gathered to mourn the loss to the community, many said they had seen the young man in the area before the attack. Grady Lewis, a 50-year-old who frequently shops at Tops, said he struck up a conversation with the teen that lasted nearly 90 minutes the day before the massacre. Lewis told The Wall Street Journal that he asked Gendron about his T-shirt, which read “Genius.”
He then told the log that the two discussed a range of issues, including critical race theory and Gendron’s somewhat unusual desire to build a time machine. Lewis said the Gendron avoided eye contact and kept looking at his phone. Then he asked Lewis – who is Black – if he would be at the store the next day.
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