JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A 21-year-old white man fatally shot three Black people in Florida with guns he bought legally despite once being involuntarily committed for a mental health exam, the local sheriff said Sunday.
Ryan Palmeter shot one of his victims as she sat in her car outside a Jacksonville store; shot another just after Palmeter entered the store; and shot the third minutes later, Jacksonville’s sheriff said.
Palmeter used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Glock handgun in the shooting, Sheriff T.K. Waters said during a press conference.
Palmeter had legally purchased his guns in recent months even though he had been involuntarily committed for a mental health examination in 2017. Palmeter killed himself after killing the three victims.
Waters identified those shot in Saturday's attack at a Dollar General 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, which is in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Palmeter lived with his parents in neighboring Clay County and had 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 writings that Waters has described as racist.
Waters said the guns were purchased in April and in June, with the dealers following all the laws and procedures, including background checks. Because Palmeter was released after his mental health examination, that would have not shown up on his background checks.
On Saturday shortly before 1 p.m., Palmeter parked at Edward Waters University, an historically Black college less than a mile from the Dollar General. The sheriff said he posted a TikTok video of himself donning a bullet-resistant vest and gloves. It was about this time that 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.
The sheriff said Palmeter, wearing his vest covered by a shirt, gloves and a mask, first stopped in front of Carr's vehicle and fired 11 shots with his rifle through her windshield, killing her.
He entered the store and turned to his right, shooting Laguerre, video shows. Numerous people fled through the back door, the sheriff said. He chased after them and fired, 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 fired, but missed.
About a minute later, Palmeter entered the store's office and texted his father, telling him to use a screwdriver to break into his room. There, his father found a suicide note and a will. On his computer, writings that the sheriff has described as racist were found addressed to his family, federal law enforcement and the media.
Eleven minutes after the shooting began, and as police entered the store, Palmeter killed himself.
"Our community is grappling to understand why this atrocity occurred," Sheriff Waters said. "I urge us not to look for sense in a senseless act of violence."
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Sunday that the Justice Department was "investigating this attack as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism."
"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," he said.
Earlier Sunday, the pastor of a church near the site of the shooting told congregants to follow Jesus Christ's example and keep their sadness from turning to rage.
The latest in a long history of American racist killings was at the forefront of services at St. Paul AME Church, about 3 miles from the crime scene. Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan wept during the service, while other attendees focused on Florida's political rhetoric and said it has fueled such racist attacks.
"Our hearts are broken," the Rev. Willie Barnes told about 100 congregants. “If any of you are like me, I’m fighting trying to not be angry.”
Deegan cried as she addressed the congregation.
"I've heard some people say that some of the rhetoric that we hear doesn’t really represent what’s in people’s hearts, it' just the game. It's just the political game,"Deegan said. "Those three people who lost their lives, that’s not a game."
The choir sang "Amazing Grace" before ministers said prayers for the victims' families and the broader community. From the pews, congregants with heads bowed answered with "amen."
Elected officials said racist attacks like Saturday's have been encouraged by political rhetoric targeting “wokeness” and policies from the Republican-led state government headed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, including one taking aim at the teaching of Black history in Florida.
"We must be clear, it was not just racially motivated, it was racist violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack Black people, period," said state Rep. Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat and one of several elected officials to speak during the church service.
"We cannot sit idly by as our history is being erased, as our lives are being devalued, as wokeness is being attacked," Nixon said. "Because let’s be clear — that is red meat to a base of voters."
DeSantis, who returned to Florida on Sunday from Iowa, where he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, said Floridians "condemn the horrific racially motivated murders perpetrated by a deranged scumbag."
"Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable, and targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida," DeSantis said at a new conference in Tallahassee. He said he promised the university's president that the state will make sure the school will have adequate security.
DeSantis will be at Edward Waters University Sunday night for a campus vigil mourning the three victims.
Rudolph McKissick, a national board member of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Baptist bishop, and senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville, was in Jacksonville on Saturday when the shooting occurred in the historically Black New Town neighborhood
"Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism," McKissick said. "This divide exists because of the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people and a governor, who is really propelling himself forward through bigoted, racially motivated, misogynistic, xenophobic actions to throw red meat to a Republican base."
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 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.
The Jacksonville shooting came a day before the 63rd anniversary of the city's notorious "Ax Handle Saturday," when 200 Ku Klux Klan members attacked Black protesters conducting a peaceful sit-in against Jim Crow laws banning them from white-owned stores and restaurants.
The police stood by until a Black street gang arrived to fight the Klansmen, who were armed with bats and ax handles. Only Black people were arrested.
AP writers John Raoux in Jacksonville, Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Trisha Ahmed in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Mike Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
The pastor of a church near the site of the racist fatal shooting of three Black people told congregants Sunday to follow Jesus Christ's example and keep their sadness from turning to rage.
The shooting devastated an historically Black neighborhood in Jacksonville on Saturday as thousands visited Washington, D.C., to attend the Rev. Al Sharpton's 60th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have A Dream” speech.
The latest in a long history of American racist killings was at the forefront of Sunday services at St. Paul AME Church, about 3 miles from the crime scene.
"Our hearts are broken," the Rev. Willie Barnes told about 100 congregants Sunday morning. "If any of you are like me, I’m fighting trying to not be angry."
The choir sang "Amazing Grace" before ministers said prayers for the victims’ families and the broader community. From the pews, congregants with heads bowed answered with "amen."
A masked white man carried out the shooting with at least one weapon bearing a swastika inside a Dollar General store, leaving two men and one woman dead.
The shooting happened just before 2 p.m. within a mile of Edward Waters University, a small, historically Black university. In addition to carrying a firearm painted with a symbol of Germany's Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s, the shooter issued racist statements before the shooting. He killed himself at the scene.
"He hated Black people," Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said.
The gunman, who was in his 20s, wore a bullet-resistant vest and used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. He acted alone and there was no evidence that he was part of a group, Waters said.
Officials said the shooter wrote statements to federal law enforcement and the media that contained evidence suggesting that the attack was intended to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of two people during a video game tournament in Jacksonville by a shooter who also killed himself.
Officials did not immediately release the names of the victims or the gunman on Saturday. Local media identified a man believed to be the shooter but his identity was not independently confirmed by The Associated Press by early Sunday.
The university said in a statement that a security officer had seen the man near the school’s library and asked for identification. When the man refused, he was asked to leave and returned to his car. He was spotted putting on the bullet-resistant vest and a mask before leaving the grounds, although it was not known whether he had planned an attack at the university, Waters said.
"I can’t tell you what his mindset was while he was there, but he did go there," the sheriff said.
Shortly before the attack, the gunman sent his father a text message telling him to check his computer, where he found his writings. The family notified 911, but the shooting had already begun, Waters said.
"This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up,” Mayor Donna Deegan said.
Rudolph McKissick, a national board member of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Baptist bishop, and senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville, was in Jacksonville on Saturday when the shooting occurred in the historically Black New Town neighborhood
"Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism," McKissick said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who spoke with the sheriff by phone from Iowa while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, called the shooter a “scumbag.”
"This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions. He took the coward’s way out," DeSantis said.
McKissick, the Jacksonville pastor, said that DeSantis' politics were contributing to racial tensions in Florida.
"This divide exists because of the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people and a governor, who is really propelling himself forward through bigoted, racially motivated, misogynistic, xenophobic actions to throw red meat to a Republican base," 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 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.
The Jacksonville shooting came a day before the 63rd anniversary of the city's notorious "Ax Handle Saturday," when 200 Ku Klux Klan members attacked Black protesters conducting a peaceful sit-in against Jim Crow laws banning them from white-owned stores and restaurants.
The police stood by until a Black street gang arrived to fight the Klansmen, who were armed with bats and ax handles. Only Black people were arrested.
Jacksonville native Marsha Dean Phelts, 79, was in Washington with others at the King commemoration and lives at Amelia Island, an African American beach community established in 1935 as a result of segregation.
"We could not go to public parks and public beaches,” she recalled. “You did not have access to things that your taxes pay for."
"We took this long journey from Jacksonville, Florida, to be a part of history," said LaTonya Thomas, 52, another Jacksonville resident riding a charter bus home after the Washington commemoration
AP writers John Raoux in Jacksonville, Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Trisha Ahmed in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Mike Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
