• Mayor Byron Brown said the supermarket mass shooter drove to Buffalo with the "purpose of taking Black lives."
  • Authorities say the gunman shot 13 people, killing 10. Officials said the majority were Black.
  • Payton Gendron, 18, was charged with first degree murder. 

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said that the gunman connected to the supermarket mass shooting drove to the area "with the express purpose of taking Black lives" during a Sunday interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Authorities said that an 18-year-old white gunman drove hours to the predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York and opened fire at Tops supermarket on Saturday afternoon.

He shot 13 people, leaving 10 dead — a majority of the victims were Black, officials said. 

"Law enforcement has been working together around the clock since this occurred at every level, federal, state, county, city and pieced together very quickly that this was a racially motivated attack," Brown told moderator Chuck Todd on Sunday. "The individual that committed this crime drove from several hours away. They were not from this community, and they drove here with the express purpose of taking Black lives."

The suspected shooter was identified as Payton Gendron, who reportedly had the N-word and the number 14 written in white paint on the barrel of his semi-automatic weapon.

Gendron, who live-streamed the attack, was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty. Federal officials said that a manifesto that appears to belong to the Conklin, New York resident mentioned plans to kill Black people and referenced the so-called replacement theory, a white supremacist conspiracy theory that believes white people will be outnumbered by people of color. 

During the interview with NBC, Brown was asked what he would like to see moving forward. 

"I would like to see sensible gun control. I would like to see ending hate speech on the internet, on social media. It is not free speech. It is not the American way. We are not a nation of haters," Brown said. "We are not a nation of hate. We need to send the message that there is no place on the internet for hate speech, for hate indoctrination, for spreading hate manifestos."

Brown continued: "I believe that what happened in Buffalo, New York yesterday is going to be a turning point. I think it's going to be different after this, in terms of the energy and the activity that we see."

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