A shooting inside a Dollar Tree store in Jacksonville, Florida, Saturday left three dead, including the shooter.
A spokesperson for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office confirmed to PEOPLE in a statement that “the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office responded to a shooting which resulted in three people killed.”
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said in a press conference Saturday that the city “suffered the loss of three precious lives at the hands of an active shooter” around 1 p.m. that afternoon.
Waters said the shooter — who has not yet been officially identified, but was confirmed to be a White male in his 20s believed to have lived with his parents in Clay County — wore a tactical vest and was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and a Glock.
According to Waters, the shooter left Clay County at 11:39 a.m. and arrived at Jacksonville at 1:18 p.m. He told his father via text to check his computer at 1:53 p.m., but by that time, he had already started shooting.
“The shooter killed three people before turning the gun on himself, taking his own life other than the three individuals killed and the shooter himself,” Waters said, adding that no one else was injured and that the shooter acted alone.
While police are not releasing the identities of the victims, Waters confirmed that two men and one woman are among the deceased and are all Black.
Waters said that the Jacksonville Clay County Sheriff’s Office learned that the shooter wrote several manifestos, “one to his parents, one to the media, and one to federal agents.”
“Portions of these manifestos detailed the shooter’s disgusting ideology of hate, plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people. He wanted to kill ‘n—-rs.’ That is the one and only time I’ll use that word,” Waters said.
“This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history, and the loss of life is tragic,” he stated. “The hate that motivated the shooter’s killing spree adds an additional layer of heartbreak. There’s no place for hate in our community, and this is not Jacksonville.”
“Our Jacksonville community collectively cries tonight to the victims and victims’ families,” Waters continued. “Our thoughts and prayers are with you now and will remain with you. Please know that in the face of this tragedy, this agency in our city stands with you, we stand united and resolved in our commitment to accountability. We stand united with each other.”
He added, “Those who have personally suffered loss and those who have been touched by this tragedy. We are with you. We stand united in a resolve against all forms of hate.”
Mayor Donna Deegan told reporters: “I’m heartbroken, obviously. This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up and there were so many people out today obviously grieving, upset. It’s just something that should not and must not continue to happen in our community.”
She then pointed out the swastika symbols on the weapons the shooter carried with him in images shown by Sheriff Waters in the press conference.
“We must do everything that we can to dissuade this type of hate,” Deegan said. “And so I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating this is for all of us because we’ve seen it too much.”
Deegan added that Saturday’s shooting at the Dollar Tree store occurred on the anniversary of the Jacksonville Landing shooting in 2018.
“I believe that was also indicated in the manifesto that he was aware of that and perhaps chose this date in alignment with that,” Deegan said. “The sheriff said that this was a hate filled crime. And we just shouldn’t have that kind of hate in Jacksonville.”
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go tell black people that racist shouldnt be a reason not to kill. chicago will answer that question.
Go tell jimjo that maybe an education could help him write a sentence that makes sense.
For God sake, probably English is your only language, try a little harder…
AR15 are only good to kill innocent people. They need to be outlawed. They are used in many terrible mass shooting. Our country has more kills with guns than any country that is not at war. It is a disgrace that people are not safe in this country. People arm themselves, so called self defense, and go out and kill. It is a disgrace, guns are a weapon that murders innocent people, children, men and women who are just going about there day.
Really? Most shootings are with handguns. Using your feeble reasoning, cars are only good for killing sober people by drunks. Your worldview is so incredibly distorted there is no use in providing you with facts. Your hoplophobic mindset cannot process facts. When you eliminate the thousands of shootings by lower class blacks, we are #173 on the list of homicides per 100k worldwide. So I guess we should deport all blacks who fit the ghetto thug template. AR15s are the most popular type of modular semiauto rifle in the USA, and come in over 25 calibers, all suitable or hunting or defense.
The culprit was baker-act and had mental problems. How was he able to buy guns legally ?
Oh wait, it is Florida, the land where GOP politicians are owned by the NRA…..
We should outlaw some guns and legalize prostitution\, maybe if these sad losers could get laid, they would not be so willing to kill and die.
No German, your idiotic reasoning is 100% a lie. The NRA is not anything like the fascist Dems and their media bray about. They do not have the funds to buy anyone, unlike you leftists. And there are many other gun rights organizations who blunt the endless dishonest attacks by crocodile teared leftists. So we should outlaw guns (100% impossible) because of tiny percentage of mental cases and ghetto thugs (most shootings are by black perps, BTW, and unreported by your media)? We should outlaw progressives who want to be our totalitarian overlords (once guns are outlawed).