The documents filed by Buffalo attorney Terrence M. Connors ask a judge to order Gendron's parents to appear in court for pretrial depositions and also to preserve numerous records regarding their son's behavior, his mental health evaluations and his purchases of a semiautomatic gun and other items used in the attack.

Representing Zaire Goodman, 20, who survived after being shot in the throat, Connors alleged that Gendron’s parents knew or should have known of his dangerous, racist and violent attitudes long before the attack.

The parents, Paul and Pamela Gendron of Conklin, in Broome County, “failed to use reasonable care to restrain Payton Gendron from so viciously conducting himself as to intentionally harm others, despite their knowledge of his propensity for not only racism but violence,” Connors said in court papers.

People who knew Gendron were aware of his “propensity for racist outbursts” since he was in sixth grade when he was suspended for using a racial slur, and the parents were aware that he was investigated by state police in June 2021 after making a remark about plans for a “murder/suicide” during an online class, Connors said.

He accused the parents of "carelessly, negligently, recklessly" allowing Gendron to buy firearms and store them in their home before the Buffalo attack.

Several of the families of the 10 deceased victims have also hired lawyers and are expected to file civil lawsuits, with possible targets including the manufacturer of the gun Gendron used, websites where Gendron posted his massacre plans and a livestream video of the shooting, and others.

Connors said he is researching lawsuits that could hold the Gendrons, gun companies, video game companies and possibly other parties accountable for the Buffalo attack.

"We promised the families that we would find the root cause of this racist and murderous plot. This is the first step," Connors said Friday afternoon.

Connors filed papers in State Supreme Court asking Gendron’s parents to appear for depositions on or before July 29.

He also asked that the courts direct the parents to preserve a wide range of records about their son dating back to January 2020, including school disciplinary records, any records of mental health evaluations, any records of guns or ammunition he owned and stored in the family home, and any records relating to the State Police investigation of last year.

Connors also asked that the Gendrons be required to provide any records of their son's travel – including EZ Pass records – since 2020, records of his use of computers and cellphones, and also to provide any of the video games and consoles used by Payton.

Arrested outside the market when he surrendered to Buffalo police moments after the May 14 slayings, Gendron faces numerous murder, hate crime, weapons and domestic terrorism charges. He has pleaded not guilty. 

His parents have not spoken publicly about the murders.

The Buffalo News was not able to reach them after Connors filed his petition with the court on Friday. The couple has not responded to The News' past requests for interviews. 

Supporters of the family have called the couple decent, “God-fearing” people who would not have supported the violence attributed to their son.

It will be a "tall order" to prove in court that the Gendron parents are legally liable for their son's violence, suggested Dmitriy Shakhnevich, an attorney and adjunct assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Shakhnevich wrote an article for a legal journal about the possible culpability of parents in the Buffalo shooting and other massacres.

"In any court case of negligence, a big issue is foreseeability," Shakhnevich told The News in an interview. "Was his act of violence something that was foreseeable to the parents? Were the parents a proximate cause of what he did? These are the questions that would be addressed in a case like this."

State records indicate that both parents are civil engineers with the state Department of Transportation, making a combined $183,400 in state salaries in 2020.

"The attack was a foreseeable consequence of acts and omissions of Paul Gendron and Pamela Gendron, as well as other unidentified defendants," Connors declared in his court papers.

He said the accused killer had weapons, body armor and other military tactical gear delivered to his parents' home in the months while he was planning his attack.

"Using his parents' power drill, Payton Gendron modified the Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle in his childhood bedroom so that it could hold a high-capacity magazine to increase its power to kill," Connors said in court papers.

In the weeks before the supermarket attack, Gendron repeatedly used his social media diary to express his fears that his parents suspected that “something’s wrong” with his behavior, The News reported on May 20. 

Gendron’s writings indicate that his father bought him a hunting gun when he was 16, and that his mother was aware that he had killed and decapitated a feral cat in a garage at the family home on March 25, about seven weeks before the Buffalo murders.

Gendron's parents did not know he owned a shotgun, an AR-15 or illegal magazines, he wrote, and neither realized their son was a white supremacist.

Based on The News’ analysis of Gendron’s Internet diary for the months leading up to the Buffalo murders, he spent more than $1,000 on eBay for gear, including a combat helmet, body armor vest, military sunglasses and a GoPro camera that he planned to use to livestream the slaughter, at least some of which appear to have been delivered to his parents’ home.

Gendron wrote that he stored weapons and tactical gear in his bedroom, including the semi-automatic rifle, decorated with racist handwriting, that he later used in Buffalo. He also tried on bulletproof vests, combat helmets and safety glasses in a bathroom in his parents’ home, photographing himself wearing the gear in a mirror.

Connors alleged that the parents remained "willfully blind" to the dangers posed by their son's ownership of guns, ammunition, body armor and tactical gear.

Connors and attorney Ben Crump are representing the families of several of the murder victims from the Tops attack.

A second legal team – including Buffalo attorney John V. Elmore and Connecticut attorney Joshua Koskoff – also represents three other families who lost loved ones in the Tops massacre. Koskoff led a group of attorneys who reached a $73 million settlement earlier this year with the Remington gun company over the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that took the lives of 20 children and six educators.

Remington made the assault rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary attack in Newtown, Conn. Authorities say the same Remington assault rifle was used by Gendron in the Buffalo attack.