BUFFALO, N.Y. — A gun bust connected to a federal prisoner a thousand miles away in Louisiana began with an investigation following the racist mass shooting at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo.
“We see this sad and tragic combination far too often of the intersection of gun violence and gun trafficking and hate and extremism,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.
In New York City’s fight against illegal guns, the online messaging app Telegram led investigators to that prison, where they allege that Hayden Espinosa, 24, sold guns and gun parts from behind bars.
The online channel attracted individuals like Payton Gendron, who joined the group prior to carrying out the mass shooting at Tops.
Members of Espinosa's channel "were motivated by Neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies," prosecutors said. Channel members are devoted to "ethnically motivated extremism" that's a "combination of racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic ideology," they said.
"The perniciousness of race based hate — the spread of neo-Nazi ideology online that was so horrifically demonstrated by the Tops supermarket attack embodied in this case into discussions about selling illegal guns and parts,” said Rebecca Weiner, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism.
The probe began two years ago when investigators learned Gendron was using that same messaging channel. Authorities say Espinosa used a smuggled cell phone to sell gun parts, only getting caught after one of his customers was an undercover NYPD officer.
He is charged with four counts of illegal transportation of firearms and one count of attempted illegal sale of a firearm.
Espinosa is expected to be extradited to New York later this month and arraigned on June 24.
Prosecutors did not say if Espinosa sold guns to Gendron.