A white gunman wearing a tactical vest gunned down three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday. All three victims died.
“This shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Sheriff Waters said.
Three Black people were fatally shot in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday before the gunman, a white man, killed himself. Investigators are treating the killing as a hate crime.
Here is what is known so far about the killings. https://t.co/0R6tWTUE80
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 27, 2023
From the New York Times:
The gunman began his rampage at around 1:08 p.m. by shooting 11 times into a car parked outside the Dollar General, the sheriff said.
He then killed a second person inside the store before chasing some customers out — it is unclear why — and then returning to shoot at a woman he did not injure. He later killed a third person inside the store.
At 1:18 p.m., he texted his father to ask him to check his computer.
When sheriff’s deputies arrived, at about 1:19 p.m., they heard a single gunshot, which was most likely the gunman killing himself, Sheriff Waters said.
Sheriff Waters said the gunman had written “several manifestoes,” including one to his parents, in which he detailed his “disgusting ideology of hate.”
“The suspect…in 2017 was committed under Florida's Baker Act, a law which allows law enforcement and medical workers to institutionalize people who could be considered a harm to themselves or others for up to 72 hours.”
But he was able to get an AR-15. https://t.co/cAx9vTy1vb
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 27, 2023
It’s always the “AR style rifle”.
Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Yet we do nothing. https://t.co/oqi3xFt9KJ
— Carlos Guillermo Smith (@CarlosGSmith) August 26, 2023