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Authorities have confirmed that three people have been killed in a ‘racially motivated’ shooting at a general store in Jacksonville, Florida.
The city’s sheriff said the shooter is also dead after turning the gun on himself.
“Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Sheriff TK Waters said at a news conference,
Earlier, mayor Donna Deegan had told television station WJXT “there are a number of fatalities” inside the store but didn’t give a precise number.
“This is unacceptable,” Deegan told the station. “One shooting is too much but these mass shootings are really hard to take.”
Numerous police officers were in the area near Edward Waters University, a small historically Black university.
Students were being kept in their dorms, the school said in a statement, and no students or faculty were believed involved.
Jacksonville police officers block the perimeter of the scene of the mass shooting. Source: AP / John Raoux/AP
Feeling ‘scared’
Penny Jones said she worked at the store until a few months ago. She lives a few blocks away in the predominantly Black neighbourhood.
“I’m just waiting to hear about my co-workers that I used to work with,” Jones said. “I don’t know if it’s safe to move about the neighbourhood.”
Jones added that she was “feeling awkward, scared.”
“I don’t want to leave my house. I’m thinking, do I want to go back to the store? Is this going to start happening more frequently? I don’t know what the cause of it is. I’m confused. It’s a lot of different feelings going on right now,” she said.
The shooting happened five years to the day when a gunman opened fire during a video game tournament in Jacksonville, killing two people before fatally shooting himself.
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