DeSantis booed at vigil for victims of Jacksonville shooting

Hundreds of people gathered Sunday at prayer vigils and in church, in frustration and exhaustion, to mourn yet another racist attack in America: this one the killing of three Black people in Florida at the hands of a white, 21-year-old man who authorities say left behind white supremacist ramblings that read like “the diary of a madman.”

Following services earlier in the day, about 200 people showed up at a Sunday evening vigil a block from the Dollar General store in Jacksonville where officials said Ryan Palmeter opened fire Saturday using guns he bought legally despite a past involuntary commitment for a mental health exam.

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 deriding “wokeness” — was loudly booed as he addressed the vigil.

Ju’Coby Pittman, a Jacksonville city councilwoman who represents the neighborhood where the shooting happened, stepped in to ask the crowd to listen.

“It ain’t about parties today,” she said. “A bullet don’t know a party.”

DeSantis said that on Monday the state would be announcing financial support for security at Edward Waters University, the historically black college near where the shooting occurred, and to help the affected families. He called the gunman a “major league scumbag.”

“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”

Sheriff T.K. Waters identified those killed as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot in her car; store employee A.J. Laguerre, 19, who was shot as he tried to flee; and customer Jerrald Gallion, 29, who was shot as he entered the store in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Jacksonville vigil honours victims of racist shooting

Community and religious leaders spoke at a vigil in Jacksonville, Fla., on Sunday for the victims of a white gunman who killed three Black people at a Dollar General store. Authorities say the shooter left behind white supremacist ramblings before carrying out Saturday’s attack.

Gallion attended St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Bishop John Guns told the crowd. He was the 33rd murder victim in the 27 years Guns has been there, he said.

“In two weeks I have to preach a funeral of a man who should still be alive,” Guns said. “He was not a gangster, he was not a thug — he was a father who gave his life to Jesus and was trying to get it together.

“I wept in church today like a baby because my heart is tired. We are exhausted.”

The latest in a long history of American racist killings unfolded early Saturday afternoon after Palmeter first parked at Edward Waters University.

The sheriff said a video posted on TikTok with no timestamp showed Palmeter donning a bullet-resistant vest. A university security guard spotted Palmeter and parked near him. Palmeter drove off and the security guard flagged down a Jacksonville sheriff’s officer who was about to send out an alert to other officers when the shooting began at the store.

Gun legally bought

Palmeter used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Glock handgun in the shooting, Waters said. He had legally purchased the guns in recent months even though he had been involuntarily committed for a mental health examination in 2017. Because Palmeter was released after the examination, that would have not shown up on his background checks.

Palmeter killed himself as police arrived, about 11 minutes after the shooting began.

Palmeter lived with his parents in neighbouring Clay County. He texted his father during the shooting and told him to break into his room, Waters said. The father then found a suicide note, a will and the racist writings Waters described as “quite frankly, the diary of a madman.”

“He was just completely irrational,” Waters said. “But with irrational thoughts, he knew what he was doing. He was 100 per cent lucid.”

“We must say clearly and forcefully 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 going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the colour of their skin.”

Biden spoke to Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan in the wake of Saturday’s horrific shooting. The president also spoke with Sheriff Waters. In both calls, he offered his full support to the people of Jacksonville, according to a statement Sunday evening from the White House.

Past shootings targeting Black Americans include one at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket in 2022 and a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

The Buffalo shooting, which killed 10 people, stands apart as one of the deadliest targeted attacks on Black people by a lone white gunman in U.S. history. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.