Most of us are still trying to understand how a person can have so much hate in their heart to drive over 200 miles to target people, just because of their skin color and zip code. Now, this. Family members of Payton Gendron, the mass murderer who committed the hate crime at the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, are blaming COVID-19 for his horrific crimes. Yes, you read that right. Two of his extended family members spoke out and tried to excuse the heinous, deadly mass shooting on a virus that 82 million other Americans contracted. I haven't heard of one other case where a person got infected with COVID-19 and then picked up an assault rifle and targeted a specific race, with the goal of killing as many people as possible. Maybe I missed that news report.

I blame it on COVID.

Getty Images

Sandra Komoroff, 68, who is a cousin of Gendron’s mom, Pamela, said to the New York Post that she attributed his white supremacy and hate to COVID-19,

I have no idea how he could have gotten caught up in this. I blame it on COVID. He was very paranoid about getting COVID, extremely paranoid, to the point that — his friends were saying — he would wear the hazmat suit [to school].

Like WTF, really?

Komoroff went on to say,

And then he got COVID just a few weeks ago. He went to family functions with a respirator mask on. He totally wasn’t going to get COVID — and then he got COVID. They were vaxxed to the max. I don’t know if it was a bad case, I just know he caught it.

Getty Images

People have been isolated for many reasons, and never massacred 10 people and injured 3. People have contracted HIV, gotten cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other serious, often deadly diseases, and never massacred 10 people and injured 3.

I call BS.

Getty Images

It sounds like his mother's cousin is doing yoga, because she is stretching and reaching. Stop making excuses for this well-thought-out and expertly executed horrific hate crime. It's infuriating and an insult to the victims that she would even allow that to come out of her mouth. Gendron treated this as a military mission. He did research. He journaled. He visited the store. He wore body armor. He apologized to a white man that he almost shot. This wasn't due to COVID-19, isolation, or paranoia.

Her husband, Dave Komoroff, 68, also subscribes to the unsupported theory that COVID-19 caused Gendron to go on a murderous rampage, targeting Black people,

In theory, [COVID] could have affected what they call the lizard brain — the part of the brain that controls aggression. I can’t say it’s impossible, but maybe that would happen one out of so many millions of times.

This attack was caused by hate. PERIOD!

I'm sick and tired of people making excuses for these mass shooters. There are people who go through tough times, suffer losses, have mental illnesses, or whatever, and still never massacred 10 people and injured 3.

My heart grieves for the 10 people who lost their lives, the 3 that were injured, the victim's families, and the countless people and the community that has now been forever changed - not due to COVID-19, but rather the hate and evil of one man.

Credit: Inside Edition via Youtube