President Joe Biden on Saturday called the fatal shootings of three Black residents in Jacksonville, Florida, last week a “terrorist act” that must be denounced.
“Silence is complicity,” Biden said during a trip to Florida to view the damage of Hurricane Idalia. “We must not, we will not, remain silent.”
Biden said he would have more to say about the shooting in the future, “but I did want to mention it while I was here.”
The shooting occurred at a Dollar General store in New Town, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida. The store is also near Edward Waters University, a small historically Black university with about 1,000 students.
A white man wearing a mask and carrying a gun painted with a swastika killed three Black people inside a Dollar General store Aug. 26 in what authorities described as a racially motivated attack in a predominantly African-American neighborhood.
The gunman, who shot and killed himself at the store after killing two men and a woman, carried an “AR-style” rifle and a handgun bearing a swastika.
Biden said the attack was “driven by racial hatred and animus.”
“Hate will not prevail in America. Racism will not prevail in America,” Biden said. “Domestic terrorism will not prevail in America.”