JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Hundreds of people gathered Sunday at prayer vigils and in churches, in frustration and exhaustion, to mourn another racist attack in America: this one the murder of three black people in Florida at the hands of a white, 21- man year-old who authorities say left white supremacist rants that read like “the diary of a madman.”
Following services earlier in the day, about 200 people attended a vigil Sunday night a block from the Dollar General store in Jacksonville where officials said Ryan Palmmeter opened fire Saturday using a gun he legally purchased despite voluntarily committing to an exam. mental health.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is running for the GOP nomination for president, who has loosened gun laws in Florida and who has antagonized civil rights leaders by taunting “woke” — was booed loudly as he spoke at the event.
Ju’Coby Pittman, a Jacksonville city councilman who represents the neighborhood where the shooting happened, stepped in to ask people to listen.
“It’s not about the party today,” he said. “Bullets know no party.”
DeSantis said that on Monday the state will announce financial support for security at Edward Waters University, a historically black college near where the shooting occurred, and to help the families affected. He called the gunman a “major league bastard.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey attend a vigil for victims of a mass shooting at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida on August 27, 2023.AP Photo/John Raoux
DeSantis speaks to mourners at the vigil.AP Photo/John Raoux
DeSantis was jeered by the crowd at the vigil.AP Photo/John Raoux
“What he did was completely unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We will not allow people to be targeted based on their race.”
Sheriff TK Waters identified those killed as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot in her car; store worker AJ Laguerre, 19, who was shot as he tried to escape; and customer Jerrald Gallion, 29, who was shot as he entered a store in a predominantly black neighborhood.
Gallion attended St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church. Paul in Jacksonville, Bishop John Guns told the crowd.
Police at the scene where gunman Ryan Palmer shot and killed three black men in a racially motivated attack.AP Photo/John Raoux
Jerrald Gallion (right) was shot and killed as he entered the store.Sabrina Rozier via AP
Angela Michelle Carr was killed in her car in a store parking lot.Facebook
He was the 33rd homicide victim in Guns’ 27 years there, he said.
“In two weeks I have to deliver the funeral of a man who should be alive,” Guns said. “He’s not a thug, he’s not a thug — he’s a father who gave his life to Jesus and tried to bring it together.
“I cried in church today like a baby because my heart is tired. We are exhausted.”
The latest in America’s long history of racial murders occurred early Saturday afternoon after Palmer first parked at Edward Waters University.
Palmmeter legally purchased the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and Glock pistol used in the shooting.Bob Self/The Florida Times-Union via AP
The sheriff said a video posted on TikTok without a time stamp showed Palmmeter wearing a bulletproof vest. A university security guard spotted the Palmmeter and placed it near it.
Palmer drove away and the security guard flagged down a Jacksonville sheriff’s officer who was about to send a warning to other officers when the shooting started at the store.
Palmmeter used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Glock handgun in the shooting, Waters said.
He had purchased the weapon legally in recent months even though he had inadvertently passed a mental health examination in 2017.
The gunman killed himself when police arrived at Dollar General.AP Photo/John Raou
Because Palmmeter is released after the exam, it won’t show up on his background check.
Palmer killed himself when police arrived, about 11 minutes after the shooting began.
Palmer lives with his parents in nearby Clay County. He texted his father during the shooting and told him to break into his room, Waters said.
The father later found suicide notes, a will and racist writings that Waters described as “frankly, the diary of a madman.”
“He was completely irrational,” Waters said. “But with irrational thinking, he knows what he’s doing. He is 100% clear.”
The sheriff said Palmer, wearing his jacket covered with a shirt, gloves and a mask, first pulled up in front of Carr’s vehicle and fired 11 shots with his rifle through the windshield, killing him.
He entered the store and turned to his right, shooting Laguerre, a video show. Many people escaped through the back door, the sheriff said.
He chased after them and opened fire, but missed. He went back inside the store and found Gallion entering the front door with his girlfriend. He fatally shot Gallion.
He then chased a woman through the store and opened fire, but missed.
Residents hold hands as they pray near the scene of the shooting.AP Photo/John Raoux
Mourners gathered at St. AME Church. Paul for a prayer service for the victims on August 27, 2023. AP Photo/John Raoux
“We must say clearly and emphatically that white supremacy has no place in America,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Sunday. “We must refuse to live in a country where black families go to the store or black students go to school live in fear of being shot to death because of the color of their skin.”
Early Sunday, the pastor of St. Paul AME near the scene of the shooting told the congregation to follow the example of Jesus Christ and keep their grief from turning into anger.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan cried during the service. “Our hearts are broken,” Rev. Willie Barnes told about 100 congregants. “If any of you are like me, I struggle not to get angry.”
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan greets DeSantis at a prayer service.AP Photo/John Raoux
Elected officials say racist attacks like Saturday’s have been encouraged by political rhetoric aimed at “wokeness” and policies from the Republican-led state government led by DeSantis, including those targeting the teaching of Black history in Florida.
“We have to be clear, it’s not just racially motivated, it’s racial violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack black people, period,” said Rep. state Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat.
“We cannot remain silent because our history is being erased, because our lives are being devalued, because consciousness is being attacked,” Nixon said. “Because let’s be clear – that’s red meat to the voter base.”
Rudolph McKissick, national board member Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Baptist bishop, and senior pastor of Bethel Church in Jacksonville, was in the city on Saturday when the shooting occurred in the historic Black New Town neighborhood.
DeSantis with other officers at the vigil.AP Photo/John Raoux
“No one is having an honest, open conversation about the presence of racism,” McKissick said.
Past shootings targeting black Americans include one at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 and a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
The Buffalo shooting, which killed 10 people, stands alone as one of the deadliest targeted attacks on Black people by a single white gunman in US history. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
