Florida
Racist attack: white man shoots three black men
Jacksonville police officers cordon off the crime scene. photo
© John Raoux/AP/dpa
Fatal attacks with firearms are part of everyday life in the USA. Again and again, racist motives play a role. Now in Jacksonville, Florida, a white man deliberately kills several black people.
A new hate crime is shaking the USA: A white man has in a shop in Jacksonville in the state Florida shot three blacks. The police spoke of a racially motivated act. The alleged shooter left several manifestos. “He hated black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters said. Police identified the shooter as a 21-year-old white man. Accordingly, he killed two men and a woman between the ages of 19 and 52 in and in front of the shop. He then took his own life.
Waters said the perpetrator wore a bulletproof vest and mask and was armed with an assault rifle and pistol in his attack on Saturday. According to authorities, swastikas were painted on one of his weapons. The sheriff said the 21-year-old acquired the guns legally. He also had no prior convictions or criminal history.
The shooter lived with his parents. Shortly before the crime, the young man sent his father a message and asked him to check his computer. The parents called the police shortly afterwards – but at the time the shooter was already at the scene and fired shots. He wrote several manifestos: for his parents, for the media and for investigators. In it he recorded a “disgusting ideology of hate,” Waters said.
Sheriff: Manifesto “a madman’s diary”
“He was targeting a certain group of people, and they were black people,” said the sheriff, who is black himself. “This was, frankly, a maniac who decided to kill others.” The manifesto is “a madman’s diary”. There is no evidence that the man belonged to a group.
According to authorities, before the attack at the store, the shooter attempted to enter a nearby university campus, which is mostly populated by black students. However, he was rejected. Waters said the perpetrator may have wanted to prepare or change clothes there. He had had the opportunity to use force, but backed off when university security officers turned him away.
The US Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice also rated the act as racially motivated. Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke of a “terrible act of hate.” The FBI is working with local law enforcement on the case. His ministry is investigating the attack as a hate crime and “racially motivated violent extremism.”
Biden was shocked by the incident
US President Joe Biden expressed his shock at the attack. The idea of white supremacy has no place in America. Biden warned that black families who went shopping or black students who went to university should not “live in fear of being shot because of the color of their skin”.
Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida. The city in the southern US state has around 970,000 inhabitants. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis condemned the act with sharp words. The Republican called the perpetrator a “scumbag”. The man targeted people because of their skin color. “That is totally unacceptable.” The man “rather killed himself than take responsibility for his actions”. He chose “the path of a coward”.
Serious gun attacks occur every day in the United States, along with deadly hate crimes. One act in May 2022 in Buffalo, New York state, particularly stood out: a racially motivated shooter killed ten people there in and in front of a supermarket with an assault rifle. The majority of the victims were black.
Racism and discrimination against African Americans and other groups is a major problem in the United States. Several thousand people gathered in the US capital on Saturday to mark the 60th anniversary of the “March on Washington”. On August 28, 1963, the black civil rights activist Martin Luther King called for equal rights for blacks and whites with the legendary words “I have a dream” (I have a dream) in front of around 250,000 people. Civil rights activists, activists and descendants of Martin Luther King complained at the event on Saturday that there is still a long way to go before true equality between blacks and whites is achieved.