Dollar General has announced that the corporation will donate $2.5 million in the wake of the Jacksonville, Florida, shooting where three black people lost their lives, including a 19-year-old employee.
The company also revealed that they will fully remodel the store and it will be reopened in late September or early October, according to CBS news. The company said the location where the shooting took place “provides daily necessities” for many Jacksonville residents. The donations will be directed to “efforts and organizations focused on healing and hope for Jacksonville,” Dollar General said in the Friday statement.
“The entire DG family continues to mourn the senseless, hate-driven loss of life that took place last weekend,” said Jeff Owen, Dollar General’s CEO, in the statement. “Our focus continues to be on supporting the victims’ families, our employees and their loved ones, alongside how we can best support and stand with the greater Jacksonville community.”
As we previously reported, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, shot and killed three people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, authorities said. All three victims were Black, and the suspect detailed a “disgusting ideology of hate” in writings, according to Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters. “Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Waters said of the suspect. The gunman was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun and outfitted in a tactical vest when he shot three people — two men and a woman — before turning the gun on himself, according to Waters. No other injuries were reported in the shooting. “This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history,” Waters said. “As a member of this Jacksonville community, I am sickened by this cowardly shooter’s personal ideology of hate.”
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During this “racially motivated” attack we learned that the gunman let a mother get away while he was on a killing spree. While speaking with News4Jax, Mercedez Jones explained how she thought it was just a regular day until she suddenly heard gunfire inside the store. “I didn’t care if he shot me, just not my baby, please. The last moments I had with her, she was being bad,” she said. “I didn’t know the nature of the crime at the time. All I [knew] was, ‘I got to get my baby out of here.’ Then he came behind the store, and we saw him. He was like in military clothes, he had like this marine [outfit] on, a bulletproof vest and the biggest gun I have ever seen strapped around his shoulders and he just sat there, he watched us, he could have killed us all.”“It was three other women, older women that worked there behind that building with me. Everybody else could jump, but I couldn’t. I had a baby. So, therefore, we [were] begging for our lives and I fell begging for mine, blocking my baby with my body and then he was like, ‘If you don’t want me to shoot you, run,’” Jones explained.