Jacksonville, FL pastor encourages sadness over fear after fatal shooting kills 3 – National | 24CA News

The pastor of a church close to the positioning of the racist deadly taking pictures of three Black individuals in Florida instructed congregants Sunday to observe Jesus Christ’s instance and maintain their unhappiness from turning to rage.

Jacksonville’s mayor wept. Others on the service targeted on Florida’s political rhetoric and stated it has fueled such racist assaults.

The taking pictures traumatized 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 a protracted 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.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland stated Sunday that the Justice Department was “investigating this attack as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism.”

“No person in this country should have to live in fear of hate-fueled violence and no family should have to grieve the loss of a loved one to bigotry and hate,” he stated.

Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan cried as she addressed the congregation.

“It feels some days like we’re going backward,” she stated.

“I’ve heard some people say that some of the rhetoric that we hear doesn’t really represent what’s in people’s hearts, it’s just the game. It’s just the political game,” Deegan stated. “Those three people who lost their lives, that’s not a game. ”

The choir sang “Amazing Grace” earlier than ministers stated prayers for the victims’ households and the broader neighborhood. From the pews, congregants with heads bowed answered with “amen.”

A masked white man carried out the taking pictures with not less than one weapon bearing a swastika inside a Dollar General retailer, leaving two males and one lady useless.

The taking pictures 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 Thirties and Forties, the shooter issued racist statements earlier than the taking pictures. He killed himself on the scene.

“He hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.Okay. Waters stated.

At the St. Paul AME Church service, elected officers stated racist assaults like Saturday’s have been inspired by political rhetoric concentrating on “wokeness” and insurance policies from the Republican-led state authorities headed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, together with one taking purpose on the educating of Black historical past in Florida.

“We must be clear, it was not just racially motivated, it was racist violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack Black people, period,” stated state Rep. Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat and one in every of a number of elected officers to talk through the church service.

“We cannot sit idly by as our history is being erased, as our lives are being devalued, as wokeness is being attacked,” Nixon stated. “Because let’s be clear — that is red meat to a base of voters.”

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 bunch, Waters stated.

Officials stated the shooter wrote statements to federal legislation enforcement and the media that contained proof suggesting that the assault was meant to mark the fifth anniversary of the homicide of two individuals throughout a online game match 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 id was not independently confirmed by The Associated Press by early Sunday.

Edward Waters University stated in a press release {that a} safety officer had seen the person close to the varsity’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 identified whether or not he had deliberate an assault on the college.

“I can’t tell you what his mindset was while he was there, but he did go there,” the sheriff stated.

Professor David Jamison, who teaches historical past at Edward Waters, attended St. Paul AME Church on Sunday morning with 4 college students from the college. The Rev. Barnes acknowledged them from the pulpit.

“These young men, they were withing feet of their lives being taken,” Barnes instructed the congregation. “And we’re grateful God spared their lives.”

The 4 college students declined to talk with reporters after church. The pastor didn’t elaborate on what occurred to them, and Jamison stated he didn’t know particulars.

“They’re overwhelmed,” the professor stated, “and thankful to be alive.”

Shortly earlier than the assault, the gunman despatched his father a textual content message telling him to examine his laptop, the place he discovered his writings. The household notified 911, however the taking pictures had already begun, Waters stated.

“This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up,” Mayor Deegan stated.

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 taking pictures occurred within the traditionally Black New Town neighborhood

“Nobody is having honest, candid conversations about the presence of racism,” McKissick stated.

DeSantis, who spoke with the sheriff by telephone from Iowa whereas campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, referred to 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 stated.

McKissick, the Jacksonville pastor, was a type of saying that DeSantis’ politics have 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 stated.

Past shootings concentrating on Black Americans embrace 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 taking pictures, 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 potential for parole.

The Jacksonville taking pictures got here a day earlier than the 63rd anniversary of the town’s infamous “Ax Handle Saturday,” when 200 Ku Klux Klan members attacked Black protesters conducting a peaceable sit-in in opposition to Jim Crow legal guidelines banning them from white-owned shops and eating places.

The police stood by till a Black road gang arrived to combat the Klansmen, who have been armed with bats and ax handles. Only Black individuals have been arrested.

— 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.