Washington: A masked white man carrying at least one weapon bearing a swastika fatally shot three Black people inside a Florida store in an attack with a clear motive of racial hatred, officials said. The shooting in a Dollar General store in a predominately Black neighbourhood left two men and one woman dead and was “racially motivated”, Jacksonville sheriff T K Waters said. In addition to carrying a firearm with a painted symbol of the genocidal Nazi regime of Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, the shooter issued racist statements before the shooting. He killed himself at the scene. “He hated Black people,” the sheriff said.
The shooting came on the same day thousands visited Washington, DC, 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 famous “I Have A Dream” speech.
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 he was part of a group, Waters said. The shooter sent written statements to federal law enforcement and at least one media outlet shortly before the attack with evidence suggesting 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. Officials did not release the names of the victims or the gunman.