

We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism." President Biden decried the shooting as "abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation" in a statement issued late Saturday. "It was a straight-up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community."

"This person was pure evil," Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said at a news conference, his voice quaking with emotion. Stephen Belongia, the FBI special agent in charge of the bureau's Buffalo field office, said the attack would be investigated both as a hate crime and as an act of "racially motivated violent extremism" under federal law.
