Jacksonville shooting suspect Ryan Palmeter was ‘socially awkward’: classmate

The Florida man who police said killed three black people at a Jacksonville dollar store before taking his own life was “introverted and socially awkward” and lived with his parents, according to former classmates and neighbors.

Ryan Palmeter, 21 — who opened fire at a Dollar General on Saturday afternoon with two guns, including a swastika-painted AR-15-style rifle — had struggled socially growing up, according to Andres Sanchez, a former classmate.

Palmeter was “involved in internet humor” and was “introverted and socially awkward,” he told News4Jax.

“I would sometimes go to his house and play video games,” said Sanchez, who is reportedly two years older than Palmeter and lives down the street from his family’s home in suburban Orange Park, Florida.

Another neighbor, who never met Palmeter but knows his parents well, speculated to the outlet that he was on medication.

“From what I understand, he was on medication and for some reason, he got off of it probably a few days or a couple of days ahead of that. That’s probably when he snapped,” said the man, identified as Greg. 

“His parents are the type of people that help anybody, anytime, anywhere. And it was a tragedy when that’s happened,” he reportedly added. 

Angela Michelle Carr, 52, store employee Anolt Joseph “A.J.” Laguerre Jr., 29, and Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 19, were slain in the shooting, Jacksonville County Sheriff TK Waters said at a Sunday press conference.

Palmeter left behind a violent manifesto that was almost 30 pages addressed to his parents, the media and the feds, according to Waters.

After his rampage, the suspect went into the store’s office and texted his father to “use a screwdriver to enter my room,” Waters said.

“The father enters the room and finds a last will and testament along with a suicide note on his laptop,” he said.

The text to his father came too late for anyone to halt the horrific killing spree, according to police and the family’s neighbor.

“When they got the note from him, saying that he was going to do this or thinking about doing this. It was too late already. When they called the Clay County Sheriff’s, he already committed the shootings,” Greg told the station.

“The manifesto is quite frankly the diary of a madman,” Waters said, adding that Palmeter had been held for emergency mental health evaluation for three days in 2017 under the state’s Baker Act, but had never been convicted of a crime and had bought the guns used in the rampage legally.

“He was just completely irrational … but he was 100% lucid. He knew what he was doing,” Waters said.

Palmeter, clad in a tactical vest, mask and gloves, shot 11 rounds at Carr as she sat in a car in the parking lot of the store at 1:08 p.m. before entering and gunning down Laguerre, officials said.

The suspect then followed witnesses who escaped out the back before returning to the store and shooting and killing Gallion, who had entered through the front with his girlfriend, according to Waters.

He then chased a woman through the store and fired at her, but missed, police said.

Palmeter then retreated to a store office, where he turned the gun on himself, 11 minutes after the racist rampage began, police said.

“There was no flag that could have come up to stop him from purchasing those guns,” Waters added.

“Therein lies the difficulty. When a person grabs ahold of a gun with, with, hateful intentions, it’s very difficult to stop that from happening.”

Officials believe Palmeter chose to unleash his attack five years after a 2018 shooting at a video game tournament that left two people dead and nine injured.

The massacre also came a day before the 63rd anniversary of the city’s infamous “Ax Handle Sunday,” when 200 Ku Klux Klan members armed with bats and ax handles attacked black people who were protesting being barred from a white-owned business.

In that incident, the police stood by and refused to intervene until a black street gang came to the defense of the protesters – and then only arrested black people.

“Our community is grappling to understand why this atrocity occurred. I urge us all not to look for sense in a senseless act of violence. There’s no reason or explanation that will ever account for the shooter’s decisions and actions,” Waters said.

“His sickening ideology is not representative of the Jacksonville community that we all love so much. We are not a community of hate. We stand united with the good and decent people of this city. We reject this inexcusable violence.”