A WHITE supremacist who killed 10 black people at a Tops Friendly supermarket in Buffalo, New York, was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Wednesday.

Payton Gendron pleaded guilty in November to crimes including murder and domestic terrorism motivated by hate, a charge that carried an automatic life sentence.

Mr Gendron also faces separate federal charges that could carry a death sentence if the United States Justice Department chooses to seek it. 

Mr Gendron wore bullet-resistant armour and a helmet equipped with a live-streaming camera as he carried out the May 14 attack with a semi-automatic rifle he purchased legally, but then modified so he could load it with illegal high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Anger briefly turned physical during Mr Gendron’s sentencing when a man in the audience rushed at him. The man was quickly restrained and authorities later said he would not be charged. 

The proceeding heard from people who lost loved ones or were themselves wounded in the attack.

Some angrily condemned him; others quoted from the Bible or said they were praying for him. Several pointed out that he deliberately attacked a black community far from his nearly all-white hometown.

Wayne Jones Snr, the only child of victim Celestine Chaney, said: “You don’t even know black people that much to hate them. You learned this on the internet, and it was a big mistake.”

In a short statement Mr Gendron said his hatred was fuelled by racist conspiracy theories he had read online.

He said he “shot and killed people because they were black.”
Sentencing Mr Gendron, Judge Susan Eagan said: “There can be no mercy for you, no understanding, no second chances.”

She called his rampage “a reckoning for a nation founded and built, in part, on white supremacy.”