Jacksonville shooter may have planned to target different dollar store – live

Vice President Kamala Harris said the US is experiencing an “epidemic of hate” in response to the shooting in Jacksonville, Florida.

“Let us continue to speak truth about the moment we are in: America is experiencing an epidemic of hate. Too many communities have been torn apart by hatred and violent extremism,” Ms Harris said.

“Too many families have lost children, parents, and grandparents. Too many Black Americans live every day with the fear that they will be victims of hate-fueled gun violence—at school, at work, at their place of worship, at the grocery store. Every person in every community in America should have the freedom to live safe from gun violence. And Congress must help secure that freedom by banning assault weapons and passing other commonsense gun safety legislation,” Harris said in her statement.”

“This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history. There is no place for hate in this community,” the sheriff said. “I am sickened by this cowardly shooter’s personal ideology.”

President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday that he has not contacted the families of the Jacksonville shooting victims yet adding that one family said they did not want Mr Biden to contact them.

The president said he spoke with leaders in Jacksonville and the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, about the shooting and asked if it was appropriate for him to speak to the families of victims.

Mr Biden said he had not reached out to victims’ families just yet, adding that one family declined to speak with him.

“Two of [the families] are prepared to be contacted, one does not want to be contacted,” Mr Biden said.

“I’m just letting things settle because everyone deals with profound loss in a different way and it’s important – know from experience, it’s important to try and do it in a way that is most helpful and eases the anxiety the most so I haven’t spoken to them yet,” he added.

Anolt “AJ” Laguerre Jr, 19, Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 29, and Angela Michelle Carr, 52, were all killed in the tragedy after a white gunman opened fire in front and inside of the store with the intention of killing Black people.

Jacksonville is home to nearly one million people, about a third of them Black, just south of Florida’s border with Georgia. The city is still coming to terms with its Southern heritage while trying to become more cosmopolitan in the shadows of the state’s other major cities: Miami, celebrated for glitzy nightlife and inviting beaches, and Orlando, home to the world-renowned Disney World and Universal theme parks.

In recent years there were signs Jacksonville was changing, and it might still be.

Jacksonville elected its first Black mayor in 2011. A couple years later, there was another watershed moment when a coalition of activists succeeded in persuading the school board, after years of failed attempts, to rename a high school honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Since then, the city has continued to sever ties to the racist past by removing a Confederate soldier statue atop a memorial in a park bordering City Hall. The excision was finalized by Jacksonville’s former mayor, a Republican who once served as his party’s statewide chair.

Donald Trump took Duval County in the 2016 presidential election. Two years later, a Black Democratic candidate running for governor, Andrew Gillum, won the county but narrowly lost statewide to now-Gov. Ron Desantis.

“It feels some days like we’re going backward,” Deegan said through tears Sunday while addressing a congregation at St. Paul AME Church, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the site of the shooting.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

A shooting in Florida that killed three people was “racially motivated” and the shooter “hated black people”, police have confirmed.

Two men and one woman were shot dead in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville by a man in his early 20s.

Jacksonville’s sheriff said the suspect, an unidentified white man in his 20s, “targeted black people” in the shooting before killing himself.

“Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people,” Sheriff T K Waters said at a news conference.

Sheriff Waters said the gunman used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 style rifle emblazoned with swastikas during his killing spree which occurred shortly before 2pm local time.

At least 346 mass shootings were recorded within the first six months of 2023 and through the July 4 weekend, a rate of at least one every day, and outpacing the rates of mass shootings at similar points in the calendar in previous years.

President Joe Biden said he has spoken with local officials in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as governor Ron DeSantis, to see if the families of victims want to be contacted.

“Two of them are prepared to be contacted, one does not want to be contacted,” Mr Biden said on Monday while meeting with organisers of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.

“I’m letting this – just let things settle because everyone deals with profound loss in a different way and it’s important, I know from experience, it’s important to try and do it in a way that is most helpful and eases the anxiety the most so I haven’t spoken to them yet,” Mr Biden said.

The daughter of a Jacksonville shooting victim has put civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump on retainer, a press release from Mr Crump said.

Armisha Payne, the daughter of 52-year-old Angela Carr, will join Mr Crump in a press conference to speak more about retaining Mr Crump.

In a statement regarding the shooting, Mr Crump said: “Hate is toxic, destructive and deadly. Three families and an entire community are facing the devastating impacts of hate without bounds. Children are now without their loving parents and these families will never be whole again. This senseless and violent act is the latest in a long series of reminders that words drive ideology which give rise to actions, unspeakable actions — and we all pay the price.”

The shooting in Jacksonville, Florida came on the same day of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

While the shooting unfolded, thousands were visiting Washington DC to attend Reverand Al Sharpton’s commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Rudolph McKissick, a national board member of Sharpton’s National Action Network, was not in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Yet his thoughts on the shooting touched on issues raised by the civil rights leader.

“The irony is on the day we celebrate the 60th commemoration of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King stood up and talked about a dream for racial equality and for love, we still yet live in a country where that dream is not a reality,” McKissick said. “That dream has now been replaced by bigotry.”