by Eric Yue
Saturday, May 14th. A day that seemed just as normal as any other turned into one of the darkest days for thousands of New Yorkers. At 2:30 pm, a gunman opened fire in a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black area. The shocking event left ten dead and many more injured. As police and law enforcement forces rushed to the scene, they captured and arrested the gunman and found dozens of rounds, a shotgun, and a backup rifle in his car. Law enforcement later identified the suspect as 18-year-old Payton Gendron from Conklin, a town outside Binghamton that is more than an hour away from the crime scene.
As the investigation began immediately and more and more details rose to the surface, many suspected that the crime was racially motivated. Over the past week, police and investigators interviewed the suspect’s parents and teachers and gathered many neglected details that led to the tragedy. Police discovered an 18-page paper that the suspect released, listing and ranting against racial and ethnic groups, after checking through social media posts. In addition, school backfiles reveal that the adolescent threatened to attack numerous of his classmates and the school itself. But despite all of these warning signs, lack of oversight and many factors still led to the deadly event.
Many eyewitnesses described the scene as “horrific,” “sorrowful,” but preventable. Employees of Tops had seen the suspect walking around suspiciously just a few days before the shooting; one store employee even confronted the 18-year-old and requested he leave the store. But none of these recollections can bring ten people back, nor can these remembrances make ten families whole again.
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