By RUSS BYNUM and AARON MORRISON (Associated Press)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The pastor of a church close to the location of the racist deadly capturing of three Black individuals instructed congregants Sunday to comply with Jesus Christ’s instance and hold their disappointment from turning to rage.
The capturing devastated an traditionally Black neighborhood in Jacksonville Saturday as hundreds visited Washington, D.C., to attend the Rev. Al Sharpton’s sixtieth anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the place the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have A Dream” speech.
The newest in an extended historical past of American racist killings was on the forefront of Sunday providers at St. Paul AME Church, about 3 miles from the crime scene.
“Our hearts are broken,” the Rev. Willie Barnes instructed about 100 congregants Sunday morning. “If any of you are like me, I’m fighting trying to not be angry.”
The choir sang “Amazing Grace” earlier than ministers mentioned prayers for the victims’ households and the broader group. From the pews, congregants with heads bowed answered with “amen.”
A masked white man carried out the capturing with no less than one weapon bearing a swastika inside a Dollar General retailer, leaving two males and one lady lifeless.
The capturing occurred simply earlier than 2 p.m. inside a mile of Edward Waters University, a small, traditionally Black college. In addition to carrying a firearm painted with a logo of Germany’s Nazi regime of the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties, the shooter issued racist statements earlier than the capturing. He killed himself on the scene.
“He hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.Okay. Waters mentioned.
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 proof that he was a part of a gaggle, Waters mentioned.
Officials mentioned the shooter wrote statements to federal legislation enforcement and the media that contained proof suggesting that the assault was supposed to mark the fifth anniversary of the homicide of two individuals throughout a online game event in Jacksonville by a shooter who additionally killed himself.
Officials didn’t instantly launch the names of the victims or the gunman on Saturday. Local media recognized a person believed to be the shooter however his identification was not independently confirmed by The Associated Press by early Sunday.
The college mentioned in an announcement {that a} safety officer had seen the person close to the college’s library and requested for identification. When the person refused, he was requested to depart and returned to his automobile. He was noticed placing on the bullet-resistant vest and a masks earlier than leaving the grounds, though it was not recognized whether or not he had deliberate an assault on the college, Waters mentioned.
“I can’t tell you what his mindset was while he was there, but he did go there,” the sheriff mentioned.
Shortly earlier than the assault, the gunman despatched his father a textual content message telling him to verify his laptop, the place he discovered his writings. The household notified 911, however the capturing had already begun, Waters mentioned.
“This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up,” Mayor Donna Deegan mentioned.
Rudolph McKissick, a nationwide board member of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Baptist bishop, and senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville, was in Jacksonville on Saturday when the capturing occurred within the traditionally Black New Town neighborhood
“Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism,” McKissick mentioned.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who spoke with the sheriff by cellphone from Iowa whereas campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, known as the shooter a “scumbag.”
“This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions. He took the coward’s way out,” DeSantis mentioned.
McKissick, the Jacksonville pastor, mentioned that DeSantis’ politics had been contributing to racial tensions in Florida.
“This divide exists because of the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people and a governor, who is really propelling himself forward through bigoted, racially motivated, misogynistic, xenophobic actions to throw red meat to a Republican base,” McKissick mentioned.
Past shootings concentrating on Black Americans embody one at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in 2022 and a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
The Buffalo capturing, which killed 10 individuals, stands aside as one of many deadliest focused assaults on Black individuals by a lone white gunman in U.S. historical past. The shooter was sentenced to life in jail with out the opportunity of parole.
The Jacksonville capturing got here a day earlier than the 63rd anniversary of town’s infamous “Ax Handle Saturday,” when 200 Ku Klux Klan members attacked Black protesters conducting a peaceable sit-in towards Jim Crow legal guidelines banning them from white-owned shops and eating places.
The police stood by till a Black road gang arrived to battle the Klansmen, who had been armed with bats and ax handles. Only Black individuals had been arrested.
Jacksonville native Marsha Dean Phelts, 79, was in Washington with others on the King commemoration and lives at Amelia Island, an African American seaside group established in 1935 because of segregation.
“We could not go to public parks and public beaches,” she recalled. “You did not have access to things that your taxes pay for.”
“We took this long journey from Jacksonville, Florida, to be a part of history,” mentioned LaTonya Thomas, 52, one other Jacksonville resident using a constitution bus house after the Washington commemoration
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AP writers John Raoux in Jacksonville, Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Trisha Ahmed in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Mike Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”