What we know about the Jacksonville Dollar General shooting

A gunman shot and killed three people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday afternoon before killing himself, The Associated Press reports.

Authorities have identified the victims as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., 19, and Jerrald Gallion, 29.

The shooter, identified by authorities as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, came armed with a handgun, AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a bullet-resistant vest, officials said.

FBI agents stationed nearby assisted local law enforcement in the aftermath of the shooting.

The victims, according to their loved ones

Angela Michelle Carr was beloved by her community. Her son, Chayvaughn Payne, described his mother as a kind woman, who’d invite people to cookouts and her family’s events.

“She would give her shirt off her back for people,” he said, per The New York Times. “This is really hard to process,” Payne continued. “To lose a mother for nothing.”

Just before the shooting, Carr had dropped a friend off at the Dollar General, spending her final moments helping someone she cared about.

At a vigil on Sunday, Jerrald Gallion’s family remembered him as a hard-working, devoted father, looking forward to a weekend with his young daughter, per USA Today.

His sister, Latiffany Gallion, said, “My brother shouldn’t have lost his life. A simple day of going to the store, and he’s taken away from us forever.”

Bishop John Guns lamented the the loss of his peer, and 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.”

AJ Laguerre was a young Dollar General cashier, who Palmeter shot as he attempted to flee, NBC News reports. He had recently graduated high school.

His father said at the vigil, “He hasn’t even lived his life yet.” Laguerre’s family members expressed their pain alongside Carr and Gallion’s family members.

Department of Justice to investigate as ‘a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism’

According to Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters, “This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people.”

In a press conference, Waters said that Palmeter had prepared separate manifestos for the media, his parents and to federal agents revealing a “disgusting ideology of hate,” per Fox News.

These manifestos also led Waters and investigators to the conclusion that this was premeditated down to the day, as it had been exactly five years since another shooting at a Jacksonville video game tournament, per AP.

Palmeter reportedly painted swastikas on the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used in the shooting. The Jacksonville sheriff’s office posted pictures of the firearms to its Facebook account.

On Sunday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement the Department of Justice would investigate the shooting “as a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism.”

In his statement, Garland continued to affirm the DOJ’s commitment to investigating hate crimes: “No person in this country should have to live in fear of hate-fueled violence and no family should have to grieve the loss of a loved one to bigotry and hate. One of the Justice Department’s first priorities upon its founding in 1870 was to bring to justice white supremacists who used violence to terrorize Black Americans. That remains our urgent charge today.”

What happened before the shooting?

According to Waters, Palmeter had texted his father instructing him to check his computer for the manifesto at 1:18 p.m., but his father hadn’t called the Clay County Sheriff’s Office until 1:53 p.m, Fox News reports.

Palmeter’s goal was to shoot and kill Black people, officials said, but his first stop wasn’t the Dollar General; it was Edward Waters University, a historically Black university in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Jacksonville.

In a press conference on Sunday, Waters said students saw Palmeter behind the library donning a tactical vest.

According to CNN, campus security was flagged immediately due to Palmeter looking “out of place.” This confrontation with security led Palmeter to leave campus for the Dollar General.

University police then alerted local law enforcement of a suspicious person on campus.

“We don’t know obviously what his full intentions were, but we do know that he came here right before going to the Dollar General,” A. Zachary Faison Jr., president and CEO of Edward Waters University, told CNN.

“It’s not by happenstance, we believe, that he came to the first historically Black university in this state, first,” Faison continued.

What are Florida’s leaders saying about the shooting?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions. And so he took the coward’s way out. But we condemn what happened in the strongest possible terms.”

At a vigil for the deceased on Sunday, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said, “The division has to stop, the hate has to stop, the rhetoric has to stop. ... We are all the same flesh, blood and bones and we should treat each other that way.”

Florida State Sen. Tracie Davis told CNN, “I’m angry, I’m sad to realize we are in 2023 and as a Black person we are still hunted, because that’s what that was. That was someone planning and executing three people.”

This story has been updated.