'Blood is on your hands': Lawsuit filed in racially motivated Jacksonville Dollar General shooting that killed 3

Attorneys for relatives of three Black victims killed in a racially motivated shooting spree at a Jacksonville Dollar General store are suing the store, the owners of the land it stands on, a company contracted for store security and the family of the man who committed the shootings and killed himself.

The 91-page lawsuit seeks unspecified damages — greater than $50,000 — on behalf of surviving family of Jerrald Gallion, Anolt “A.J.” Laguerre Jr. and Angela Carr, who were killed Aug. 26 by Ryan Palmeter, a white man who left manifestos declaring his racial animosity. The victims were 29, 19 and 52 years old, respectively.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Duval County's Circuit Court by attorneys Michael Haggard and Ben Crump accuses the businesses of negligence and responsibility under Florida’s wrongful death law.

At a news conference Tuesday, family members talked about suing as a tool to deliver justice and the possibility that it could make more mass killings less likely.

“I’m so tired of [hearing] ‘A.J., he’s in a better place.’ No, I want him here,” Quantavious Laguerre said of his younger brother who had worked at the store less than a year. “… I can’t bring A.J. back. If I know there is some sort of accounting so that this won’t happen again, that will bring a little bit of peace to me."

Reflecting on other shooting sprees across the country, Laguerre said "I want this to stop. I hear about this all the time. I never thought it would be me."

The suit seeks damages from DOLGENCORP LLC and DC Strategic LLC, both described as “operating/managing” the store at 2161 Kings Road. It also sues Corso General II LLC, which owned and leased the site to the Dollar General operating firms, and Interface Security Systems, LLC, a Missouri firm contracted to handle security.

The suit calls the store where the killings happened “a criminal’s safe haven” that was “devoid of meaningful security measures.”

"Dollar General, the blood is on your hands, too," Crump said during the news conference. "The presence of a security guard would have made all the difference in the world."

The suit also says Palmeter's estate should pay for mental pain and suffering, loss of earnings and support by his victims and the cost of funerals, as well as other unspecified losses.

Gallion’s mother, Carrol Gibbs, talked about her son’s habit of calling each morning and the frantic call from the mother of Gallion's young child saying he had been shot. She described confusion about how racial animosity grows to the point of anonymous killings.

“I feel like all that starts at home,” she said.

The suit additionally seeks damages from Palmeter’s parents, Stephen and Maryann Palmeter, in whose Orange Park home the 21-year-old shooter lived.

It argues the couple “owed a duty of care to the general public” to take precautions against potential violence by their son, described by the lawyers as “a ticking timebomb” having “an obsession regarding firearms and violence, and living in a room filled with prescription medications and alcohol, as well as firearms.”

Palmeter's father called the Clay County Sheriff's Office after getting a text from his son, but the notice was too late to prevent the bloodshed a county away.

The day of the killings, Ryan Palmeter had driven to a different dollar store but left after spotting a security guard, according to the Sheriff's Office. He then went to Edward Waters University and put on a military-style tactical vest before being approached by university security, leaving again, and driving to the nearby Dollar General, where he opened fire with an AR-15 rifle marked with swastikas.

Haggard said one goal in including Palmeter's parents in the suit is to get information about how his focus on guns and racial grievance was fueled.

Haggard said young white men are being radicalized and "we need to get to the bottom of what's happening." He said Palmeter's parents might not have been connected to his decision to kill, but the lawsuit would help shed light to determine that.

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"We want to find out what was going on at home, and we'll see where this leads," Haggard said.

He said the Dollar General massacre shared common threads with killings in 2022 at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., where a white attacker drove for hours to find a Black neighborhood.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Dollar General victims' families sue store, gunman's family