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A white teenager who fatally shot 10 people in a racist attack at a New York grocery store in a black neighbourhood had been taken into custody and given a mental health evaluation a year ago, but was released after roughly a day, authorities said on Sunday.
The suspect, Payton Gendron (18), surrendered to police on Saturday at the Buffalo, New York, grocery store after what authorities called an act of “racially motivated violent extremism”.
“The evidence that we have uncovered so far makes no mistake this is an absolute racist hate crime that will be prosecuted as a hate crime,” Buffalo police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told reporters on Sunday.
Eleven people struck by gunfire were black and two were white, officials said. The racial breakdown of the dead was not made clear.
Mr Gramaglia told reporters that Gendron had been taken into custody and given a mental evaluation over a day and a half last June but was released.
While he did not provide additional details, New York State police said in a statement on Sunday that they had been called to a high school in Gendron’s hometown of Conklin, New York, near the Pennsylvania border, on June 8th, 2021, in response to a 17-year-old student making a threatening statement.
Without identifying Gendron, police said the student was taken into custody and given a mental health evaluation at a hospital. He was not charged criminally.

Authorities called a ‘hate crime and racially motived violent extremism’, killing 10 people and wounding three others. Photograph: John Normile/Getty Images


Officials said the gunman, who used an assault weapon in the Buffalo attack, was wearing military-style tactical gear including a helmet.
Mr Gramaglia said the gunman shot four people outside the store, three fatally. Inside the store, a security guard who was a retired local police officer fired multiple shots at the attacker. However, the commissioner said the rounds had been blocked by the body armour worn by the gunman. He then killed the guard before moving through the store shooting other victims.
Upon being confronted by police, the suspect had put the gun to his own neck before officers talked him into dropping the weapon.
New York governor Kathy Hochul told ABC News on Sunday that an investigation would focus on what could have been done to stop Gendron, since he had advertised his views online and had been on the authorities’ radar.
“I want to know what people knew and when they knew it,” she said.
Authorities said Gendron drove to Buffalo from his home several hours away to launch the attack, which he broadcast in real time on social media platform Twitch, a live video service owned by Amazon. com.
He opened fire at the Tops grocery store using a gun that he had legally purchased but had illegally modified a high-capacity magazine, Ms Hochul said.
A 180-page manifesto circulating online on Saturday, believed to have been authored by Gendron, outlined ‘The Great Replacement Theory’ – a racist conspiracy theory that white people are being replaced by minorities in the US and other countries.
Ms Hochul told reporters she was dismayed that the suspect managed to live-stream his attack on social media, which she blamed for hosting a “feeding frenzy” of violent extremist ideology.
“These outlets must be more vigilant in monitoring social media content,” she said.

Flowers and candles lay outside the scene of a shooting yesterday at a Tops supermarket, in Buffalo, New York State. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP Photo


Social media and streaming platforms such as Twitch, which said it removed the stream after less than two minutes, have grappled with controlling violent and extremist content for years.
Gendron was arraigned hours after the shooting in state court on first-degree murder charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole, said Erie County District Attorney John Flynn.
Gendron entered a plea of not guilty and is scheduled to return to court on May 19th. He was on suicide watch and isolated from other incarcerated individuals on Sunday, Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said.
US president Joe Biden decried the shooting as “abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation” in a statement on Saturday. – Additional reporting Reuters