LA Times wonders if 'white,' Trump-supporting hometown fueled hatred of Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron

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Fox News' Alexis McAdams spoke with a Tops grocery store worker following the massacre as police say the suspect visited the store many times before carrying out the shooting.

A new L.A. Times report pushed the idea Thursday that the hometown of Buffalo mass shooting suspect Payton Gendron could have fueled his murderous extremism because it's "90% white" and 60.3% voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

The piece, written by L.A. Times staff writer Connor Sheets, took a deep dive into Conklin, New York. The rural upstate New York town that he observed is predominantly white, chock-full of conservatives who mistrust the media, and may be fueling hate because its community is so insular.

The article read as if Sheets was tying middle America to killings by White supremacists. 

Sheets began by describing the pleasant and peaceable nature of the town, at least what it looks like on the surface. He wrote that people "are drawn to Conklin’s country feel and rustic rhythms."

BUFFALO, NY - MAY 14: Buffalo Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York, after the mass shooting.  (Photo by John Normile/Getty Images)

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Sheets described how Gendron, "An avowed white supremacist" is not really an anomaly in a town such as Conklin: "His rage, according to police, played out in hate-filled online netherworlds populated by mostly young men who spout venom, crave attention and are becoming an increasing danger in towns like this, where extremism is seeping into the mainstream."

The piece then went into the racial make-up of the town to see if that’s where this hatred could be traced. Sheets continued, "Ninety percent of Conklin’s just over 5,000 residents are white. That’s down from 96.8% in 2010, largely because of an increase in its multiracial and Latino populations, according to the most recent census." He also cited that the number of African American residents is currently 52.

He quoted local resident Lily Freer who "has grown up with this whiteness and what she and others see as widespread intolerance fed by insularity." Freer was in Gendron’s high school class and recalled his "nice, smiling face" but was never close with him. Still, Sheets wrote, "she believes ‘people are brought up to hate,’ and that racism is not a rare trait in their hometown."

FBI and other law enforcement agents are investigating Saturday's mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markers in Buffalo, N.Y. (Fox News Digital/Michael Ruiz)

The author talked to another student who denied that Gendron’s "surroundings had anything to do with the situation" and that Conklin "is a very good and quiet area," but then Sheets brought up Philippine immigrant Osha Mabilog, who lives in the area.

"Mabilog said that as a person of color she feels unsafe in many peripheral areas of the city, including Conklin," he wrote, and quoted her saying, "I see people’s eyes looking at me because I’m not white. In the white Republican areas near Binghamton, I won’t say that they’re all racist, but a good chunk of them are."

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He also quoted a local college student who claimed, "People say the N-word left and right. It’s people thinking they’re funny, and then there’s people using it against people of color. It’s very common to hear it in school and also from older people."

Continuing to paint the paranoid, mistrusting, xenophobic nature of the town, Sheets claimed, "In Conklin and similar communities outside Binghamton, distrust of media and fear of reprisal for talking freely are common, especially among older residents."

Payton Gendron appears during his arraignment in Buffalo City Court, Saturday, May 14, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. Gendron was arraigned on first-degree murder charges and ordered detained without bail. Police officials said the 18-year-old was wearing body armor and military-style clothing when he pulled up and opened fire at people at a Tops Friendly Market.  (Mark Mulville/The Buffalo News via AP)

He added that these residents "live in a slice of America — like many others — that often appears resistant and at times resentful of a nation changing around them, a notion that has fueled the steady rise of identity politics."

"[U]nsurprisingly, as a relatively rural community, Conklin is redder than the overall county. That year, 60.3% of the votes in Gendron’s hometown were for Trump and 37.4% for Biden," he wrote.

"Here in Conklin, even unrelated conversations often turn to the assertion that President Biden and/or socialism are destroying America," the piece continued, and mentioned that these conversations are so common that some local Democrats are afraid to speak their mind. 

"A woman named Linda who’s lived in Conklin for over a decade said she is a Democrat, but she is afraid to share her views publicly because she worries about retaliation from hard-line conservatives in town," Sheets wrote, quoting her as saying, "There’s too many Trumpsters here. Their ideologies come from people like Trump."

Payton S. Gendron is seen in a booking photo from May 15, 2022 (Erie County District Attorney)

"The extent of the influence of this place on Gendron and the formation of the extreme views that allegedly led him to carry out the Saturday attack will probably never be known," he allowed before noting, "But he grew up in this community. This is the air he breathed." 

He then brought up a previous mass shooter who came from the local upstate New York area. "In April 2009, Jiverly Antares Wong shot and killed 13 people and injured four more, then killed himself. Wong, who was fluent in Vietnamese, carried out the shooting inside a business where he had taken courses that year to improve his English," Sheets wrote. 

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Apparently, Wong had been "’degraded and disrespected’ for his substandard English skills," wrote Sheets, quoting the Binghamton police chief at the time. 

Sheets concluded by giving a Binghamton resident the final word. The resident accused his neighbors of "bigotry, and not just against African American people but also people of other races, religions… Am I surprised that something like that [massacre] came out of Conklin? No."