A pastor who emceed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a vigil following the racist massacre of three Black individuals at a Dollar Store is now saying that he regrets his decision to pass the mic to DeSantis, according to new reports.
At the event, DeSantis was booed, with people yelling “you’re not welcome here” upon his introduction.
Pastor John Allen Newman, who supervised the event, said that he intended just to acknowledge the governor’s presence at the vigil, and did not intend to give him a chance to speak.
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“I mistakenly forgot he was to be acknowledged, would not speak,” Newman told News4Jax. “So the fluke was I called him to go out and speak. It was not some kind of grandiose scheme. That was actually a mistake I made by misreading the program.”
Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman told the station she wasn’t aware that DeSantis was attending until an hour before the vigil. Pittman says she tried to “defuse” the situation “to bring some civility for the families who were there and the survivors,” but has since endured backlash for trying to calm the crowd’s reaction to DeSantis.
“I will tell you that the crowd, they had every reason to be angry, upset because of what had happened the day before,” she said. “But unfortunately, I have been criticized, threatened about the whole situation.”
Republican presidential candidate DeSantis has been in the crosshairs of his community ever since the late-August shooting in Jacksonville that left three people dead and that was determined to be racially motivated.
He was heavily heckled when he spoke at the event. This week, DeSantis recoiled when a Black man at a news conference told him his policies had put him at risk.
