The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing a statement from the messaging app, that the 18-year-old suspect in the deadly mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, invited people to a Discord chat room approximately 30 minutes before carrying out the attack.

According to the FBI, White Payton Gendron committed an act of "racially motivated violent extremism" when he opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon at a grocery shop in an African-American neighborhood of Buffalo on Saturday.

Eleven of the thirteen victims of gunshot were Black. The gunman live-streamed a portion of the attack on a social media platform, during which he killed ten people.

The New York Times and other media outlets claimed that Gendron posted about his attack preparations in a private Discord chat room that was only accessible to him in the months preceding up to the attack. The New York Times said that the postings featured hand-drawn maps of the Tops Friendly Market, where the attack occurred.

"What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log," Discord told the New York Times.

They added: "However, approximately thirty minutes before the attack, a limited group of individuals were invited to and joined the server. Prior to it, our records suggest that nobody else had access to the private server's journal chat log."

Who Gendron may have invited to the server was unclear. Discord did not respond to a request for comment immediately.