Payton Gendron was questioned by police and later hospitalized for observation after making multiple threats against his high school during his senior year last year, the Washington Post reports.
But even with the history of making violent threats less than a year ago, he was able to legally buy a rifle, which he used to murder ten and injure three others Saturday at a supermarket in a predominantly-Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.
When asked by a school counselor what his plans after high school were, he replied, “Murder/suicide.” Gendron had also made threat in June 2021 about shooting up graduation events at his high school. He was questioned by police, and then held overnight at a local hospital for a psychological evaluation.
Unlike his reported manifesto, those threats did not target a specific racial or religious group, nor were they targeted at any specific individual, so he was released from the hospital.
In his manifesto, Gendron discussed the months it took for him to plan the attack, as well as how easy it was to purchase the Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle he used in the attack, which he purchased months before and modified to make it deadlier.