(Reuters) – The 18-year-old man accused of the deadly mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, invited people to a Discord chat room to see his plans around 30 minutes before he carried out the attack, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing a statement from the messaging app.
The FBI said Payton Gendron, who is white, committed an act of “racially motivated violent extremism” when he opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle on Saturday at a grocery store in a predominantly African-American neighborhood of Buffalo.
Eleven of the 13 people struck by gunfire were Black. Ten of the victims were killed in the rampage, part of which the gunman live-streamed on a social media platform.
In the months leading up to the attack, Gendron posted about his attack plans on a private Discord chat room that was visible only to him, the New York Times and other media reported. The posts included hand-drawn maps of the Tops Friendly Market, where the attack took place, the New York Times reported.
“What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log,” Discord told the New York Times.
It added: “Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”
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It was not clear who Gendron may have invited to the server. Discord did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Rami Ayyub)