U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden lay flowers at a memorial outside Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, May 17, 2022, for victims of a mass shooting.

U.S. President Joe Biden has paid tribute to the victims of a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.

The Bidens’ schedule in Buffalo included going to a memorial site and paying respects to the victims of Saturday’s shooting, and also meeting with victims’ families, law enforcement, first responders and local leaders.

“The President will call this despicable act for what it is: terrorism motivated by a hateful and perverse ideology that tears at the soul of our nation,” a White House official told reporters ahead of his visit.

Authorities say 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who is white, killed 10 people and wounded three others at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Eleven of those shot were Black.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation attack is investigating the attack as a hate crime.

“I want to be clear, for my part, from everything we know, this was a targeted attack, a hate crime, and an act of racially motivated violent extremism,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement Monday. “While there remain a lot of unknowns as there always do in an investigation at this stage, what is absolutely certain is that we at the FBI are committed to comprehensively and aggressively investigating Saturday’s attack.”

Investigators are studying a racist 180-page document, purportedly written by Gendron, that said the assault was intended to terrorize all nonwhite, non-Christian people and get them to leave the United States. (AP/VOA)

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