ATLANTA — The Georgia NAACP says it plans to mobilize and head to Jacksonville if the local chapter in Florida requests assistance following a deadly, racist attack at a Dollar General store over the weekend.
Channel 2′s Audrey Washington went to Jacksonville and found a growing memorial out of the store where innocent people were gunned down on Saturday.
Police said the hate-filled shooting happened not far from a historically Black university. Investigators said the gunman first stopped at that HBCU before heading to the Dollar General where he opened fire, killing three people.
The victims were innocent bystanders, and all were Black.
“The shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said Monday.
Deputies said the gunman -- identified as a 21-year-old Clay County, Florida -- left racist writings and used racial slurs during the shooting.
Officials say he first went to a nearby HBCU but was denied access by a security guard.
The sheriff’s office told Washington that the shooter then went to the Dollar General and opened fire.
By the time sheriff deputies arrived, they found the gunman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The victims were identified as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Jerrald Gallion, 29, and Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., 19.
Georgia NAACP president Gerald Griggs said his chapter is prepared to mobilize and head to Jacksonville, once the local NAACP requests assistance.
“Marches, protests, vigils. Mobilization to Tallahassee to call for change,” Griggs said. “There is a national issue of racial intolerance that is happening.”
Meanwhile, metro Atlanta faith leaders are reacting.
Pastor Jamal Bryant with New Birth Cathedral in Stone Crest says the murders of African Americans inside a church in Charleston, at a supermarket in Buffalo, and now at a dollar store in Jacksonville show something must be done to end the hate-filled violence.
“Where can you be safe?” Bryant asked. “It’s an overhaul of what America has to do to look itself in the eye or in the mirror because it’s easier to look out the window.”
A federal hate crime investigation is currently underway in the shooting.