A British teenager whose far-right extremist videos influenced the gunman in an American mass shooting has been sentenced to 11 and a half years’ detention. Daniel Harris, 19, from Derbyshire, posted videos which were shared by Payton Gendron, who has admitted a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York.
His videos were also linked to Anderson Lee Aldrich, the only suspect in a shooting at a gay bar in Colorado, Manchester Crown Court heard. Sentencing Harris on Friday, Judge Patrick Field KC said: “What they did was truly appalling but what they did was no more than you intended to encourage others to do when publishing this material online.”
Referring to Gendron, 19, who has pleaded guilty to murder and hate-motivated terrorism charges, the judge said: “This indicates that at the very least the material you produced and published has had some influence upon the young man, and I note he was a similar age to you, who went out and shot 10 black people dead in a store in Buffalo.” He said he had “no hesitation” in coming to the conclusion that Harris was “highly dangerous” and passed an extended sentence, with a licence period of three years on top of the custodial sentence.
