If it were a cinematic story, it would consist of a parallel montage between the two Americas.
At the same time that thousands of citizens gathered in the capital of the United States to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech, in Jacksonville, Florida, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21-year-old white man, left manifestos that appeared to be written by the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
"I will kill blacks, I hate them", wrote the young man, according to the texts that his parents provided to the police. "His manifestos are the diary of a madman, completely irrational thoughts, but he knew what he was doing, he was 100% lucid," remarked the county sheriff, T. K. Waters, yesterday.
Palmeter, who lived with his parents, kept his word. Armed with a Glock pistol and an AR-15 rifle, decorated with a swastika, he killed three African-Americans (two men and one woman) before taking his own life at a Dollar General discount store in city in northern Florida. And he killed them in a systematic way: he chose the victims by the color of their skin and avoided shooting the whites who were in the establishment, Waters said in a press conference.
The sheriff offered a small sample of the security camera footage. Dressed in paramilitary style with a bulletproof vest, mask and gloves, the perpetrator shoots at a vehicle parked at the door of the business (first victim) and is seen entering, looking and aiming. "It's a short video because the rest is not made for television or entertainment," explained the policeman. But he assured that, based on the images, they observed that there were whites in the store, which the gunman dismissed. Waters used the word "choose" all the time when referring to the three dead, aged 19, 29 and 52.
"The hatred that motivated the crime adds an additional layer of pain and anguish," he said.
"We have seen that racial hatred has grown", weighed Sunday Martin Luther King III, son of the legendary reverend leader, after the massacre. "We have to do something about it now, this is inhumane, unacceptable, this is not the United States", he added.
“While we continued the march for freedom in Washington, actors of hate continue to implement the agenda of white supremacism in Jacksonville and end the lives of black citizens in the name of an era we refuse to back," lamented Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, the organization that fights for civil rights.
Sheriff Waters, who is African-American, explained that Palmeter bought the handgun and rifle legally, and that the sellers did the right thing. During his responses, he exonerated the guns and blamed the person. "This was a bad person. The problem is the individual, weapons are only the tool of the wicked to do horrible things," he said. He also remarked that there was "no red flag" of warning, "we had no information that this could happen". The gunman had no previous record, despite the fact that in 2017, at the age of 15, he was under observation for 72 hours for a complaint of domestic violence due to a call from his brother.
According to Waters, the attacker passed through Edward Waters University, a historic center for black students. He did not show any intention to "exercise violence despite being close to people who could be his target". A video on TikTok captured her dressing to kill.
He then headed to the store. When he had already killed three, Palmeter sent a message to his father. He asked her to use a screwdriver and access his room. This is what the father did, who found the racist manifestos and a suicide note on the computer. "There is no explanation - reiterated Waters - for the actions of this nauseating ideology".
