After Jacksonville shooting, DeSantis commits funds for victims, HBCU security
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday said the state will be giving $1 million to increase security at Edward Waters University, a historically Black institution that was identified as a stop for a white gunman before he killed three Black people at a Jacksonville retail store.
The man, identified Sunday as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter of Clay County, drove to the university on Saturday but was refused entry. He then drove to the nearby Dollar Tree store, where he killed two shoppers and an employee.
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said on Sunday that it was unclear whether the shooter intended to attack the school but that the shooter — who Waters said “did not like Black people” — could have had the opportunity to do violence at the historically black university.
“Targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a press conference Monday morning, just before he updated Floridians on Tropical Storm Idalia.
DeSantis then announced the state would be setting aside $1 million to help security efforts at Edward Waters University and is donating $100,000 to a charity that’s supporting victims’ families.
“We are not going to allow in the state of Florida our HBCUs to be targets for hateful lunatics,” DeSantis said at the press conference.
Edward Waters University is one of four historically Black universities in Florida. The three others are Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens, and Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.
DeSantis, who has been campaigning nonstop across the country, traveled to Jacksonville on Sunday to attend a prayer vigil outside the Dollar Tree store where Saturday’s deadly shooting took place. His visit was not without political tensions. At one point, DeSantis was interrupted by jeers from some attendees, forcing Jacksonville City Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman to step in to settle the crowd.
On Monday, the Republican governor reiterated his condemnation for the “horrific racially motivated murder perpetrated.” He called the shooter a “deranged scumbag.”
State Rep. Angie Nixon, a Democratic from Jacksonville, called the governor’s announcement a “Band-Aid offer.”
“Let me be perfectly clear: no amount of money can erase the pain caused by years of marginalization and oppression,” Nixon said in a statement. “Our historically Black institutions have faced an uphill battle for decades, and I invite DeSantis to go back through unfilled budget requests and line item vetoes to begin to provide the funding they’ve needed for years. For it to take murder for him to dig in his overflowing coffers for support is appalling.”
