Manifesto of teen charged with killing 10 in Buffalo mentions 3 N.J. towns, authorities say
The 180-page document allegedly written by the white teenager charged with killing 10 people in a grocery store in a predominantly Black Buffalo neighborhood Saturday mentions the Jewish communities in Lakewood, Toms River and Jersey City, authorities say.
Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said he was notified Saturday that Lakewood and Toms River were in the document authorities said was written by alleged shooter Payton Gendron, according to Patch.
The towns are listed among others in New York that have large Jewish communities, which Gendron wrote are “deplorable.”
“We reached out to those communities earlier today, and are working with our partners, departments and chiefs,” Mastronardy told the Asbury Park Press. “We monitor the activity at those locations.”
There was no specific threat to the communities in Ocean County, the sheriff said.
Gendron is charged with murder in a terrorist attack that authorities have said was a planned assault on nonwhite and non-Christian people meant to drive them from the country. He drove 200 miles to Upstate New York from his home in a small town near the Pennsylvania border. He said he planned to keep killing if he escaped the scene of the supermarket shooting, Buffalo police said.
Federal authorities were working to confirm the authenticity of the 180-page document allegedly written by Gendron.
The document also outlines a racist ideology rooted in a belief that the U.S. should belong only to white people. All others, the document said, were “replacers” who should be eliminated by force or terror.
In the portions of the manifesto that mentions Jewish communities, first reported by the Lakewood Scoop, Gendron verbally attacks areas with Hasidim populations, saying they are insular, care only about furthering their religious beliefs and are a drain on local populations’ resources. He also allegedly wrote that anyone who speaks against them are labeled antisemitic.
Lakewood is home to a majority Orthodox Jewish community, as well as a smaller Hasidic, or Hasidim, community. Towns that border Lakewood, including Toms River and Jackson, also have large Jewish populations.
Jersey City is also home to a Hasidic community, which was also targeted in an attack.
In the fall of 2019, a man and woman went on a shooting rampage, killing a Jersey City police officer, then firing in a kosher market in Jersey City’s Greenville neighborhood, killing three more people. The suspects died in a gun battle with police.
And last month in Lakewood, Jews were targeted by a man who stabbed one, carjacked another and struck two with a vehicle in a crime spree authorities allege was motivated by hate. That suspect, who faces a federal terrorism charge, allegedly said in an interview with detectives that “the Hasidic Jews (are) the real devils.”
In Buffalo, the community mourned the 10 people who died in the shooting and prayed for the three others who were injured.
At State Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, Deacon Heyward Patterson was mourned during services Sunday. Pastor Russell Bell couldn’t wrap his mind around the attack and Patterson’s death.
“I don’t understand what that is, to hate people just because of their color, to hate people because we’re different. God made us all different. That’s what makes the world go ‘round,” he said.
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