Man who killed 10 Black people at Buffalo Tops market sentenced to life in prison

Less than three months after pleading guilty, the man who murdered 10 Black people at a Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, New York, was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.

In an emotional hearing, Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan called on the community to reject racism and hatred in the wake of this “heinous act,” saying to the defendant, “There can be no mercy for you.”

“You will never see the light of day as a free man ever again,” Eagan said as she sentenced 19-year-old Payton Gendron.

On May 14, Gendron went on a shooting rampage at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Ave. in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding three others.

“I shot and killed people because they were Black,” he said at the sentencing hearing.

The courtroom was cleared earlier in the sentencing after a man in the audience lunged at the defendant. Later, while Gendron was speaking, someone in the court began screaming at him.

Families of the Tops shooting victims testified during the sentencing hearing.

Tops reopened the Jefferson Ave. store about two months following the shooting, after the market underwent substantial interior and exterior renovations. The retailer also added a host of safety measures to the store, including increased security, surveillance cameras, emergency exits, improved sight lines on the sales floor, installation of an emergency evacuation alarm system and more.

“White supremacy has been an insidious cancer on our society and nation since its inception,” the judge said during sentencing. “We must learn from that history, or we are doomed to repeat it.”

Violent crime at grocery stores has become an issue of increasing concern for retailers in recent years.

In November, a longtime overnight manager at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, opened fire in the store’s breakroom, killing six co-workers before turning the semi-automatic handgun on himself.

Eight in 10 retailers surveyed by the National Retail Federation (NRF) for its 2022 Retail Security Survey reported that violence and aggression associated with organized retail crime incidents increased in the last year.

Nearly 78% of those surveyed said guest-on-associate violence is either somewhat more or much more of a risk today than five years ago, according to the NRF, and 57.9% said the threat of mass violence and active assailants is a more significant threat than it was a half-decade ago. Associate-on-associate violence is seen as a growing threat by 48.3% of those polled.

What’s more, 89.7% of those surveyed said COVID-19 has led to an increase in the risk of violence in their retail operations, NRF said, in the form of increased hostility, labor shortages and issues related to masking.

“The current climate of active assailants and gun violence add to retailers’ concerns about being able to keep employees and customers safe,” the report said.