er Zeneta Everhart, who ran for office over a year after her son, Zaire, survived the shooting.  Ten people died that day in an egregious way and in an awful, terrible, traumatic way. 

Her son, now 25, and the two other survivors have had their lives irrevocably altered, she added.

How racist conspiracy theories played a role in the attack

On May 14, 2022, a then-18-year-old Gendron drove over 200 miles (320 kilometers) from his home in Conklin, a predominantly white and rural town, to Buffalo. He fired around 60 shots from a semiautomatic rifle at employees and shoppers. Video revealed Gendron apologized to a white store worker after shooting him in the leg. He surrendered to police as he exited the supermarket.

Investigators found past social media posts and other writings by Gendron dedicated to planning an attack to frighten people who were non-white and non-Christian into leaving the U.S. He also promoted a baseless  great replacement theory  that people of color will replace white people through higher birth rates and immigration.

The victims who were killed were all Black and between ages 32 and 86. Besides Chaney, they included Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young, Andre Mackneil, church deacon Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield, Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison and Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard.

Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. Justice Department in 2024 decided to pursue a death sentence. It was the first capital case overseen by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had previously put a moratorium on the death penalty.

Gendron and his legal team relayed that he would only plead guilty in his federal case in exchange for a life sentence. The Justice Department rejected that proposal.

Anti-Black crimes still lead in hate crime data

The 2022 shooting stands apart as one of the deadliest acts of anti-Black violence in modern U.S. history. It also reflects a grim reality represented in national bias crime statistics.

Black people have comprised the  no. 1 numerical target  annually since the FBI began collecting data in 1991, hate crime analyst Brian Levin, of the California Association of Human Relations Organizations, said. The record high was 3,670 anti-Black bias incidents in 1996.

According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement agencies reported over 2,800 anti-Black hate crime incidents in 2025, nearly three times the number targeting Latinos. The FBI also reported a 7% decline in hate crime incidents from 2024 to 2025.

The Buffalo shooting and the 2015 Charleston, S.C., church shooting, in which a white gunman killed nine Black churchgoers, show how online radicalization makes this a terrorism matter as well.

 Unfortunately, he (Gendron) fits the pattern of young, mostly white males undertaking targeted massacres which are then justified by manifestos, which are also part of a continuing chain that references prior attacks often but seeks to encourage future ones,  Levin said.

Everhart, whose son still has shrapnel in his body after being shot in the neck, says hate crime enhancements might be the only deterrent.

 This isn't a shooting over a robbery or a domestic violence situation. This is domestic terrorism,  Everhart said.  It is important we go after the death penalty in this case. But if he doesn't end up getting it, I know that justice will be served. 

Garnell Whitfield lost his 86-year-old mother Ruth in the shooting. He has no thoughts on whether capital punishment should be issued because  this is the federal government doing what they deem they have to do. 

He's spent the past four years honoring his mother's memory by working with church groups, victims' rights groups, gun lobbyists and others to address white nationalist movements and racial violence.

Whitfield said he hopes trial testimony reveals more about  the support that he (Gendron) might have had, the radicalization, social media and societal ills that caused people to hate and be violent that are inherent in our society  that preceded the killing.

 Those are the things that I care about,  he said.