Man killed in Jacksonville Dollar General mass shooting had 4-year-old daughter – NBC Chicago

Jerrald Gallion was planning to spend the weekend with his 4-year-old daughter, but the devoted dad was instead one of three black people gunned down Saturday afternoon at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida.

Gallion, 29, was shot as he entered the front door of a store with his girlfriend in a predominantly black neighborhood. This murder makes him another victim of the latest racist attack in the United States.

“My brother shouldn’t have lost his life,” his sister, Latiffany Gallion, said on Sunday. “One day spent at the store, and he was taken away from us forever.”

The shooter, Ryan Palmeter, 21, opened fire on Saturday using weapons he had purchased legally despite an involuntary mental health examination. Authorities say he left behind white supremacist ramblings that sound like “a madman’s diary.”

The other two people killed have been identified as Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot in her car, and Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre, Jr., 19, a store worker, who was shot while she was trying to run away.

On Sunday, family members recalled Gallion’s sense of humor and work ethic. He viewed his job as a restaurant manager as a way to support his daughter, Je Asia.

Even though her relationship with the child’s mother did not last, they worked together to raise Je Asia. This earns him lasting affection from Sabrina Rozier, the child’s maternal grandmother.

“He never missed a beat,” Rozier told reporters Sunday night after a prayer vigil near the scene of the shooting. “He received her every weekend. In fact, he was supposed to have it (Saturday).

Gallion attended St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Bishop John Guns told the crowd at the prayer vigil.

Three people were fatally shot in a Jacksonville store on Saturday in what police describe as a racially motivated crime.

“In two weeks I have to preach the funeral of a man who should still be alive,” Guns said. “He wasn’t a gangster, he wasn’t a thug – he was a father who gave his life to Jesus and was trying to pull himself together.”

As the child sat nearby, wearing a pink dress with long braids in her hair, Rozier said the girl last spoke to her father around 2.30am on Saturday, when she had trouble falling asleep.

“We’re trying to figure out how to tell his only daughter that he’s not coming back,” Rozier said. “I’m his grandmother and I don’t know how to tell him. I don’t have the words.