Police: FBI investigating whether Buffalo gunman had targeted Rochester 

[
      {
        "name": "500x250 Ad",
        "insertPoint": "5",
        "component": "15667920",
        "parentWrapperClass": "",
        "requiredCountToDisplay": "1"
      }
    ]

As the city of Buffalo reeled from the racist massacre at a Tops supermarket, word spread swiftly on social media in Rochester on Monday that the suspected gunman had considered attacking a variety of targets here.

Circulated widely were screenshots of posts from the online message platform Discord that offered specific details on how the author of the posts would carry out attacks at locations that local law enforcement officials said they believed were in Rochester.

The purported author went by the pseudonym “Jimboboiii,” which was the same username under which the alleged Buffalo shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, reportedly live-streamed the carnage at Tops.

The author identified by name several churches and a small restaurant in Rochester neighborhoods whose residents are predominantly Black. The author also wrote about visiting the intersection of West Main Street and West Avenue “to shoot blacks” and filing a fake report of a Black man waving a gun “at the Walgreens near Brooks Avenue” to throw police off his trail.

There is a Walgreens on Thurston Road at the corner of Brooks Avenue in the 19th Ward.

The messages, four in total, were dated earlier this year, from January through March.
Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter and Greg Bello, spokesperson for the Rochester Police Department, said they were made aware early Monday of the screenshot messages circulating online and their purported association to the gunman, and that federal law enforcement authorities were investigating. Baxter confirmed that the locations identified by name were in Rochester.

“We’re becoming aware of it just like everybody else is, we’re offering our assistance to Buffalo Police and the FBI,” Bello said. “... Any time you become aware of information that’s a threat to the Rochester area, we obviously take it seriously and do whatever steps are necessary.”

Neither Baxter nor Bello said the author of the posts was Gendron.

The FBI does not comment on its investigations.

Nevertheless, the posts led residents in the area of the locales mentioned to suspect that their neighborhoods had been scoped out by the alleged shooter, and reinforced for some of them the precariousness of life as a person of color in the United States.

Those fears were especially palpable at the Tops on West Avenue. Its address, near West Main Street, led many people to speculate that the “West Avenue and West Main Street” mentioned in the Discord posts was a reference to the store.

“It’s just crazy that stuff like this is happening or can happen this close to home,” said Bryan Starkweather, a Tops shopper who first saw the speculation about the gunman targeting Rochester on Facebook. “If anything, that Tops is right around the corner from where I live.”


CITY left phone messages with every location mentioned in the purported Discord posts. Most did not immediately return calls.

Al D’Agostino, security director for Wilmorite, the company that manages Marketplace Mall, which was on the list, said he was unaware of the speculation circulating online prior to receiving CITY’s call.

Sabrina LaMar, president of the Monroe County Legislature, issued a statement Monday that decried the attack in Buffalo and imagined how it might have unfolded in Rochester.

"It is a sobering realization that if Erie County Inmate #157103 had not changed his planned attack, it could have occurred right here in Rochester," she said, referring to the shooter by his inmate number. "The victims could be even closer to home — our direct neighbors, family members, friends, or even you or me."

The shooter is believed to have driven some 200 miles from his family’s home in Conklin, N.Y., near the Pennsylvania border, to carry out the massacre in Buffalo.

By the time he was arrested, 10 people were dead and three were injured. All of those people who were killed and one of the wounded were Black.

The massacre was top of mind for Darrin Pixley, who was shopping at the Tops on West Avenue.

“It’s about being aware of your surroundings at all times,” he said. “Just keep a lookout because you never know when somebody’s going to go off.”

Gino Fanelli is a staff writer for CITY. April Franklin is a reporter for WXXI News.