The FBI is interviewing accused Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron’s parents, who both work as civil engineers with the state Department of Transportation, according to law enforcement sources and online records.
The couple, Paul and Pamela Gendron, are cooperating with investigators, sources added to the AP.
Photos at the home Sunday showed agents sifting through items in a large shed on the property.
Payton, 18, is accused of traveling about 200 miles from the family’s home in Conklin, NY, to the Buffalo Tops Friendly Market on Saturday afternoon, when he launched a slaughter that killed 10 people. Payton specifically researched neighborhood demographics to target a predominantly black community, sources have said.
The teen was a former student at Broome County Community College, where he aspired to be an engineer like his parents, according to ABC News.
Terry Place, who lives a few doors down from the Gendrons in Conklin, said his family had occasional typical neighborly interactions with the shooter’s parents — and only really remembered Payton as their old paperboy.
“We spoke to her a couple times here and there,” Place said of Pamela Gendron, who was known to take morning walks along their quiet street in recent years.
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A preliminary investigation found that Payton had repeatedly visited sites espousing white supremacist ideologies and race-based conspiracy theories and extensively researched the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the man who killed dozens of people at a summer camp in Norway in 2011, authorities have said.
Additional reporting by Zach Williams and Post wires
