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Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer issued a statement on Tuesday, May 17, saying that there are no direct threats to any local communities as implied by a 180-page manifesto authored by the alleged Buffalo shooter.
Payton Gendron, 18, was arraigned Saturday on first-degree murder charges and ordered detained without bail on accusations he carefully planned the massacre at a Buffalo supermarket that left ten people dead. Eleven of the 13 people he shot were black, reports say.
Gendron had penned a 180-page manifesto that named Lakewood and Toms River among the communities that the alleged shooter considered "deplorable," multiple news outlets said citing authorities in Ocean County.
Billhimer said, "I can state, unequivocally, that there is no evidence that the shooter had any intention or inclination to travel to anywhere in Ocean County. Furthermore, based on what we know at this time, the shooter has no ties to New Jersey."
In his writings, Gendron criticized communities with large Hasidic populations, among others.
Billhimer said, "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, the prosecutor said.
"It is imperative that we reject hate and bias in all of its insidious forms," Billhimer said. "As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in Ocean County, I have made it very clear that acts of bias intimidation will not be tolerated and every allegation regarding a bias incident or crime will be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
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