A white gunman wearing a tactical vest barged into a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday and fatally shot three Black people in an attack that the authorities said they were investigating as a hate crime.

Local law enforcement on Sunday released the name of the gunman, identifying him as Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21. The gunman died after shooting himself, Sheriff T.K. Waters of Jacksonville said at a news conference on Saturday.

“This shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Sheriff Waters said.

The rampage on Saturday was the latest high-profile racially motivated attack carried out by a white gunman in the US.

A shooting last year that targeted Black people left 10 dead at a supermarket in Buffalo. And in 2019, an attack at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killed 22. The gunman in that shooting told the police he wanted to kill Mexicans.

In Jacksonville, the victims were two males and a female, officials said. No one else was shot or injured.

The authorities said the gunman left his parents’ house in neighbouring Clay County at 11.39am on Saturday and headed toward Jacksonville. At 1.18pm, he texted his father to ask him to check his computer.

Sheriff Waters said the gunman had written “several manifestoes”, including one to his parents, in which he detailed his “disgusting ideology of hate”.

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office received a call from the gunman’s parents at 1.53pm. By that time, Sheriff Waters said, the shooting had already begun in Jacksonville. The authorities said the gunman was armed with an AR-15-style rifle that bore swastika markings, as well as a handgun.

He had been spotted on the campus of Edward Waters University, a historically Black college about half a mile from the Dollar General.

The school had ordered its students to shelter in place amid reports of the shooting. It was not clear what, if any, intentions the gunman might have had related to the school.

“I can’t tell you what his mindset was while he was there,” Sheriff Waters said. “But he did go there and he did put his vest on and a mask on and then went directly to Dollar General.”

The sheriff added: “This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history. Any loss of life is tragic, but the hate that motivated the shooter’s killing spree adds an additional layer of heartbreak.”

In Jacksonville, a city of 971,000 where 30 per cent of residents are Black, people formed prayer circles outside the scene, which was cordoned off by the police.

Residents weighed in as details emerged.

“Hate motivated him to do this,” said Warren Jones, a school board member and former councilman. “There’s a lot of hate speech going on.”

The police said the gunman had been involved in a “domestic call” in 2016 and that he underwent a mental illness examination by the authorities in 2017.

On Saturday evening, governor Ron DeSantis released a video statement calling the shooting “horrific” and saying the gunman had targeted victims based on their race. “That is totally unacceptable,” DeSantis said.

New York Times News Service