Three people are dead after a gunman opened fire in a Florida Dollar General Store before fatally wounding himself on Saturday, Aug. 26.
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the shooting was fueled by anti-Black racism.
“Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Waters said at a news conference.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan confirmed Saturday that there have been multiple fatalities in the store near the intersection of Kings Road and Canal Street in Northwest Jacksonville. She also reported that the assailant had barricaded himself in the store.
A witness outside of the dollar store said the gunman, who reportedly left multiple manifestos, was shooting at cars in the parking lot. Two of the victims are males, according to Waters, and one is female. All of them were Black. The rifle used in the shooting was painted with swastikas.
“He wanted to kill n—ers,” said Waters. “That’s the one and only time I am going to use that word.”
The white male, who was reportedly armed with an AR-style rifle and handgun, reportedly killed himself after being pinned down by officers. Authorities did not officially release the shooter’s name as of 7:30 p.m. Saturday, but were reportedly searching his parents’ home.
“This is unacceptable,” Deegan said. “One shooting is too much, but these mass shootings are really hard to take.”
Waters said the suspect lived in Clay County — around 37 miles outside of Jacksonville — with his parents and had a history of domestic violence and mental health issues. He was involved in a domestic call incident in 2016 but not arrested, and in 2017, he was involuntarily held under Florida’s Baker Act for a mental health evaluation.
The shooting was near Edward Waters University, where the suspect was reportedly spotted around 12:45 p.m. behind the library putting on a ballistics vest. Campus authorities at the historically Black university tried to capture him but were unsuccessful, according to WJXT.
The campus alert system was activated, and students sheltered in place until the scene was cleared.
At 1:15 p.m., the shooter texted his father and told him to check his computer, the sheriff said. At 1:53 p.m., his family called authorities. By that time, he had already started the massacre.
Local and federal authorities are investigating the shooting. Waters believes the shooter acted alone.
“We are still in the early stages of this investigation, so there’s a lot of information that we don’t know at this time,” Waters said.
The shooting is similar to the May 2022 mass shooting in a Buffalo Tops Friendly Markets supermarket. Ten Black people were killed, but the shooter was arrested by authorities and later received 10 concurrent life sentences in New York. The suspect in that case is still facing federal hate crimes and gun charges.
