Jacksonville sheriff: Dollar General shooter stopped at another dollar store before rampage

Before killing three Black people in a racially motivated shooting and then himself at a Jacksonville Dollar General store on Saturday, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, a 21-year-old white man from neighboring Clay County, stopped at another dollar store, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said late Monday afternoon, sharing new information in the case.

He said the Sheriff's Office, along with FBI and ATF agents, continues to investigate the plot around the clock.

Waters also revealed that Palmeter previously worked at a Dollar Tree store in the Oakleaf area from October 2021 to July 2022.

Based on new video evidence, the revised timeline of events, which included a previously reported stop at Edwards Waters University, a historically Black university, suggested that the Dollar General store may not have been the shooter's initial target.

Palmeter’s stop at the Family Dollar store at Myrtle Avenue and Kings Road at 12:23 p.m. Saturday was captured on surveillance video, which shows Palmeter parking and exiting his vehicle, entering the store wearing a mask over the lower part of his face and then leaving a few minutes later carrying a small bag.

The video shows him opening and holding the door for two Black customers — one of them a child — exiting the store and two Black female customers entering behind him.

Five minutes later, Palmeter returns to his vehicle with a shopping bag.

Moments later, at 12:31 p.m., a First Coast Security vehicle entered the lot and parked in front of the Family Dollar, passing Palmeter as he retrieved a small bag from the back of his Honda Element and got back into the vehicle, Waters said.

At 12:36 p.m., he opened the driver's door, but remained in the vehicle. Two minutes later, while still seated, he closed the door before backing out of his parking space and leaving the lot at 12:39 p.m.

All the while, the First Coast Security vehicle remained parked at the store, Waters said in his detailed timeline of events.

"It doesn't appear ... that he wanted to face anyone that may cause him any issues," Waters said, responding to a reporter's question. "It looks like he wanted to take action at the Family Dollar ... but he did not, I think, because he got impatient, he got tired of waiting."

After leaving the dollar store, Palmeter drove his Honda to the campus of Edward Waters University, where he parked at M.B. Salter Hall, a residence dorm, at 12:48 p.m., according to a timestamp on the video.

There, video footage shows him exiting the vehicle and opening its rear hatch, retrieving and putting on a tactical vest and a blue, button-up shirt over the vest before getting back behind the wheel as a campus security vehicle pulls into the lot and parks at 12:51 p.m.

At 1:18 p.m., the video shows Palmeter backing out of his spot and driving off the lot as one of two security guards exits their vehicle and walks toward Palmeter’s Honda.

Waters repeated Monday that he doesn’t believe the university or its students were a target.

“I don’t believe that EWU was a target,” Waters said, noting that two African American men were sitting in another car parked nearby. “It looks to me that he went there to change into whatever he needed to change into,” he previously said, referring to the shooter’s tactical gear. “He had an opportunity to do violence there; he did not.”

HBCU was shooter's initial target, university's president says

EWU President and CEO A. Zachary Faison Jr., though, disagreed with Waters, saying Monday afternoon he believed the university to be the initial target.

As the oldest HBCU in Florida, Faison said its long, proud history of educating Black students when others would not made the school a target.

"It was that history, that progress, that Black excellence that this feeble, virulent-minded, white domestic terrorist sought to stamp out by aiming his original target at Edward Waters University," Faison told reporters at a Monday news conference.

Faison said he would not directly "take qualm" with what Waters said but that he believed the interaction could not have been a coincidence.

"[The shooter] came to where he thought African Americans would be, and that's Florida's first HBCU," Faison said. "It's also not lost on us he came to the New Town community. This is the heart of the Black community in Jacksonville."

Nate Monroe: Mourning Jacksonville needed a leader. Instead, it got Ron DeSantis

Video shows officers inside Dollar General

Other new video evidence shared late Monday afternoon shows four Jacksonville sheriff’s officers entering what appears to be a rear door of the Dollar General store. The officers, outfitted with tactical gear and rifles drawn, move through the store’s aisles before suddenly taking cover at what Waters said was the sound of a gunshot when Palmeter turned one of his guns on himself.

Earlier, Palmeter texted his father at 1:18 p.m., telling him to go into his room in the Orange Park home he shared with his parents to check his computer, where he found at least three manifestos, one each for his parents, the media and federal agents.

More evidence released: 911 call from Dollar General shooter's father too late; killing had already begun

Waters said the shooter's manifesto was still being combed through by federal and local law enforcement officials to make sure there are no additional actors and to "trace the intelligence to make sure that there's nothing out there rising up from this," he said, noting it could be a week or two before they release the manifesto.

Waters did say, based on reviewing the evidence, that Palmeter, "didn't like anyone ... he didn't like government, he didn't like left or right, if that's what we're talking about."

"He was just completely irrational. But with his irrational thoughts, he knew what he was doing. He was 100 percent lucid," Waters had said on Sunday.

And it was his "disgusting ideology of hate," Waters said, that led to Saturday's shooting deaths of three Black people, identified as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot while sitting in her car; Anolt Joseph "A.J." Laguerre Jr., 19, a Dollar General employee; and Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, 29, who was shot when he entered the store with his girlfriend.

Palmeter was armed with two legally obtained guns, police said, including an "AR-15-style" rifle emblazoned with Nazi symbols.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville Dollar General shooter a former Dollar Tree employee