During a Saturday evening news conference, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the Dollar General store shooting suspect “hated black people.”
Breitbart News reported that three people were killed in the shooting during early Saturday afternoon and that his parents called police to say he had left behind a manifesto.
ABC News noted that Sheriff Waters indicated the suspected shooter, who killed himself after killing three, carried out a “racially motivated” attack on a Dollar General in a predominantly black neighborhood.
Waters said, “He hated black people.”
The suspected shooter was armed with a Glock handgun and an AR-15-style rifle.
ABC News pointed out that the shooting suspect’s writing indicated “he committed the shooting because it was the fifth anniversary of when another gunman opened fire during a video game tournament in Jacksonville.”
At least one of the suspect’s firearms allegedly had a swastika on it, but Sheriff Waters said, “There is absolutely no evidence the shooter is part of any larger group.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.