Jacksonville hate crime shooting: Guns found to be legally purchased

A photograph of shooter Ryan Christopher Palmeter is shown on a video monitor during Sheriff T.K. Waters' press conference. Photo / AP

WARNING: This story discusses shooting and violence.

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 on Sunday.

Ryan Palmeter shot one of his victims as she sat in her car outside a Jacksonville store; another just after he entered the store, and 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 at a news conference.

Palmeter had legally purchased his guns 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 in a predominantly Black neighbourhood.

Parishioners pray during a service for the victims of a mass shooting. Photo / AP

Palmeter, who lived with his parents in neighbouring Clay County, 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 Waters 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.

“Therein lies the difficulty. When a person grabs a hold of a gun with hateful intentions, it is very difficult to stop that from happening,” the sheriff said.

On Saturday shortly before 1pm, Palmeter parked at Edward Waters University, an historically Black college less than a kilometre 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. He said it appears that Palmeter did not intend to attack the school.

“He had an opportunity to do violence at (Edward Waters) and did not. There were people in very close proximity,” the sheriff said.

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 the writings, which Waters called “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% lucid.”

Eleven minutes after the shooting began, and as police entered the store, Palmeter killed himself.

“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.”

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running for the GOP nomination for president and who has loosened gun restrictions in Florida, was loudly booed as he addressed a vigil drawing about 200 people on Sunday evening. Ju’Coby Pittman, a Jacksonville city councilwoman who represents the neighbourhood 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.”

Law enforcement officials continue their investigation at a Dollar General Store that was the scene of a mass shooting. Photo / AP

DeSantis said that on Monday the state would be announcing financial support for security at Edward Waters University and to help the affected families, calling 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.”

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 4.8km 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.”

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 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.

“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.”

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 the city on Saturday when the shooting occurred in the historically Black New Town neighbourhood.

“Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism,” 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 US history. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.