TOMS RIVER, NJ – The Buffalo mass shooter who went on a white supremacist driven shooting rampage at a local grocery store has no known ties to New Jersey and poses no immediate risk to the greater Lakewood area, according to Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer.
Billhimer confirmed an early breaking news report by Shore News Network that revealed most of the gunman’s manifesto was a copy and paste work that sourced large portions of the document from other authors.
REPORT: Did Buffalo Mass Shooter Reference Ocean County’s Orthodox Jewish Community in Manifesto?
In that manifesto, the shooter, whose name will not be republished by Shore News Network going further in order to not make his a criminal ‘martyr’ for the white supremacist movement, he mentioned the greater Lakewood Jewish community.
Billhimer said despite that entry, the shooter had no links to the area.
“At this point in time, I have had the opportunity to read and digest what has been referred to as the shooter’s one hundred and eighty-page “manifesto.” While Federal and New York State law enforcement officials are still working to verify this document’s authenticity, the document includes despicable anti-Semitic, white supremacist and radicalized racist memes and tropes with repeated references to “replacement theory.” Billhimer said. “A reference in the document to Lakewood and Toms River raised concerns locally here in Ocean County. The Ocean County Prosecutor’s High-Tech Crime Unit has been able to discern that these references to Lakewood and Toms River were copied by the shooter and incorporated into his “manifesto’ from a 2020 article written and published on the internet by a different author. This theme rings true with the majority of the “manifesto,” as it includes numerous references that were either copied and/or cut and pasted from other sources on the internet. Large portions of this “manifesto” were actually copied from the Christchurch shooter’s 2019 manifesto.”
Billhimer suspects the shooter was not planning a similar attack in the Ocean County area, which is a three-and-half hour drive from the shooter’s Pennsylvania home in Susquehanna.
“I can state, unequivocally, that there is no evidence that the shooter had any intention or inclination to travel to anywhere in Ocean County,” Billhimer said. “Furthermore, based on what we know at this time, the shooter has no ties to New Jersey. I have confirmed this information with the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
