20-year-old Payton Gendron killed ten black people in a supermarket in Buffalo, USA.
Now the prosecutor is demanding that he get the death penalty.
Among the relatives, there are mixed opinions about the decision.
“It would have satisfied me more to know that he would have spent the rest of his life in prison surrounded by people he tried to kill,” said Mark Talley, whose mother was killed in the mass shooting.
Ten people were killed and three injured when white supremacy activist Payton Gendron opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, USA in May 2022.
The mass shooter, who was 18 at the time, is already serving a life sentence for the mass shooting – without the possibility of parole. But now he may be sentenced to death after a federal prosecutor in New York requested the death penalty, reports the AP news agency.
New York state no longer has the death penalty, but the Justice Department still has the option of seeking the death penalty if Gendron is found guilty in a separate hate crime case in federal court.
Gendron had previously promised to plead guilty in the hate crime case if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Federal death sentences have been rare under President Joe Biden. It is the first time that Biden’s Justice Department has approved a new request for the death penalty.
Mixed opinions
Relatives of the victims have expressed mixed opinions about whether they thought federal prosecutors should pursue the death penalty.
Mark Talley, whose 63-year-old mother Geraldine Talley was killed in the attack, said he was “not necessarily disappointed” by the decision, although he would have preferred Gendron to spend his life behind bars.
“It would have satisfied me more to know that he would have spent the rest of his life in prison, surrounded by people he tried to kill,” Talley says.
Gendron’s attorney, Sonya Zoghlin, said she was “deeply disappointed” by the government’s decision to seek the death penalty, citing the young age of the perpetrator at the time of the mass shooting.
The deed was broadcast live
The shooter filmed the act using a body camera and broadcast live on social media.
He was able to be arrested by the police on the spot, and was later charged with, among other things, domestic terrorism and ten counts of murder and several attempted murders.
Of the 13 people he shot, eleven were black and two were white.