Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was booed on Sunday at a vigil for the victims of Saturday’s racist attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville.
Three people were killed in the shooting.
Footage from several angles shows the governor ― who is also running for president ― getting jeered by the crowd:
Jacksonville City Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman asked the crowd to settle down and put political parties aside.
“It ain’t about parties today,” she said. “A bullet don’t know a party.”
Critics called out DeSantis for making it easier to carry firearms in the state and for his divisive “anti-woke” policies.
“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,” Rudolph McKissick, senior pastor of the Bethel Church in Jacksonville, told the Associated Press.
Police identified the gunman as 21-year-old Ryan Palmeter, and said he had a Nazi symbol on his weapon.
“He hated Black people,” Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a press conference on Sunday.
Palmeter, who killed himself after the attack, also left behind a racist manifesto.
“The manifesto is, quite frankly, the diary of a madman,” Waters said. “He was just completely irrational. But with irrational thoughts, he knew what he was doing. He was 100% lucid.”
