Jacksonville Gunman’s Initial Target May Have Been Different: Cops

The Florida man who gunned down three Black people before fatally shooting himself at a Dollar General in Jacksonville on Saturday may have initially targeted a different store, authorities said Monday in a press conference that saw them lay out the most detailed timeline of the racially-motivated hate crime yet presented to the public.

Ryan Palmeter, 21, was captured on surveillance video pulling into a Family Dollar around 12:23 p.m., Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told reporters. The Family Dollar is approximately a mile away from the Dollar General.

The footage, released by Sheriff Waters Monday, shows Palmeter walking toward the store with a mask over the lower half of his face. He holds the door open for a number of Black customers exiting and entering the store, including a child.

He exits the store five minutes later, carrying a small shopping bag. As he returns to his vehicle, a security vehicle enters the parking lot, passing him. The security vehicle remained in the lot as Palmeter got into his vehicle, sat there for several minutes, opened the driver’s door without getting out, and closed it before finally peeling out of the lot at 12:39 p.m.

Water speculated that Palmeter had wanted to avoid any resistance on his rampage. “It appears to me that he didn’t want to face anyone that may cause him any issues,” he said. “So it looks like he wanted to take action at the Family Dollar… He did not, I think, because he got impatient, he got tired of waiting.”

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Palmeter then drove to Edwards Waters University, a historically Black campus, where he parked outside of a residence hall at 12:48 p.m. The gunman, as previously reported, then got out and donned tactical gear, but was chased away by a campus security guard who was alerted to a person who “looked out of place” by a student, Edward Waters president Dr. A. Zachary Faison Jr. told CNN.

“We don’t know obviously what his full intentions were, but we do know that he came here right before going to the Dollar General,” Faison said. “Members of our university security team reacted almost immediately. I think the reports are in less than 30 seconds after he made contact and drove onto our campus.”

Campus police followed him out of the lot, but Waters reiterated investigators didn’t believe that either the school or its students had been a target. “It looks to me that he went there to change into whatever he needed to change into,” he said on Sunday. “He had an opportunity to do violence there; he did not.”

In a press conference on Monday, however, Faison disagreed. “It was that history, that progress, that Black excellence that this feeble, virulent-minded, white domestic terrorist sought to stamp out by aiming his original target at Edward Waters University,” Faison said.

“[The shooter] came to where he thought African Americans would be, and that’s Florida’s first HBCU. It’s also not lost on us he came to the New Town community. This is the heart of the black community in Jacksonville.”

Palmeter then moved on to the Dollar General, where he killed Angela Michelle Carr, 52; Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., 19; and Jerrald Gallion, 29.

Why he chose the Family Dollar and the Dollar General remains unclear, but Waters also said Monday that Palmeter had previously worked at a Dollar Tree store in southwest Jacksonville from Oct. 2021 to July 2022.

“So it gives me some comfort knowing or believing that based off what we saw, him stopping at the Family Dollar, him working at a Dollar Tree previously, then him going to a Dollar General, that was his intent the entire time,” the sheriff said. “Why that store, still hard to tell.”

Meanwhile, the FBI said Monday that evidence collected so far has indicated some possible motivations, according to ABC News.

“We’ve identified multiple documents, including racist writings and rants that the depict a hatred toward African Americans, as well as other cultural groups. One of the primary themes throughout the writings is a belief in the inferiority of Black people,” said Sherri E. Onks, special agent in charge of the FBI Jacksonville Field Office, discussed to state and local law enforcement partners during a conference call Monday. The transcript was obtained by ABC. “And there’s also evidence that he harbored anti-LGBTQ+ and antisemitic grievances.” FBI Director Christopher Wray reportedly described the shooting as a “hate crime.”