Source: Xinhua News Agency / Getty
The murderous white supremacist teenager who ruthlessly gunned down 10 Black people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last year will spend the rest of his natural life behind bars. And while that won’t bring the victims back to life, perhaps it will grant their family members some semblance of peace.
According to the Grio, Judge Susan Eagan kept things plain with 19-year-old Payton Gendron—whose adherence to the white nationalist “great replacement theory” helped inspire him to commit the massacre—when she told him, “There can be no mercy for you, no understanding, no second chances,” before sentencing him Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Before Eagan handed down her sentence, the court heard emotional testimony from family members of the victims.
From the Grio:
Tamika Harper, a niece of victim Geraldine Talley, said she hoped Gendron would pray for forgiveness.
“Do I hate you? No. Do I want you to die? No. I want you to stay alive. I want you to think about this every day of your life,” she said, speaking gently. “Think about my family and the other nine families that you’ve destroyed forever.”
Gendron locked eyes with Harper as she spoke, then lowered his head and cried.
Kimberly Salter, the widow of security guard Aaron Salter, explained that she and her family were wearing “red for the blood that he shed for his family and for his community, and black because we are still grieving.”
Other family members made sure their rage was loud and clear when confronting Gendron.
One man charged at him and had to be led out of the courtroom.
After the victim testimonies, the court heard Gendron’s brief statement about how he “shot and killed people because they were Black,” just before sliding in an explanation literally nobody cared to hear about how the internet made him do it.
“I believed what I read online and acted out of hate, and now I can’t take it back, but I wish I could, and I don’t want anyone to be inspired by me,” he said, just before a woman in the courtroom who couldn’t take it anymore stood up and let it be known that “we don’t need” his useless mea culpa, and then she stormed out.
Good riddance to another violent white supremacist, and may they all share his fate.
