Jacksonville corrections officer Mary Malcolm tends to the memorial she and her family rebuilt that commemorates the three people gunned down in a racially motivated shooting at the Dollar General store on Kings Road. The first memorial was destroyed in late April of 2026. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on May 6, 2026 at 4:34 pm
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Jacksonville corrections officer Mary Malcolm often stopped at a memorial commemorating the three people gunned down in a racially motivated shooting in 2023 at the Dollar General store on Kings Road.
She pointed at the memorial site Wednesday. “This is not my family,” she said of the victims — A.J. Laguerre, Angela Carr and Jerald Gallion. “But this is my family.”
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So when the 3-year veteran of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s saw that the memorial had been destroyed in late April, she decided to fix it.
She joined her husband and family last weekend to rebuild it with a concrete bench, angels and crosses, and lots of flowers. The Lord moved her to take care of it, she said.
“I want the community to realize that this is still not done,” she said of the memorial. “We still have a little bit more work to do. We want to get a tree of life for the victims,” she said as traffic buzzed past the new memorial.
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“We also need more things — you guys can come and donate. You still got time to help out. We still need some help so hopefully when you come by and see it, you guys can jump out of the car and donate or help out.”
The shooting
The shooting occurred Aug. 26, 2003. That afternoon, Sheriff T.K. Waters said the gunman, wearing tactical gear, set out to kill Black people.
Police said the 21-year-old gunman from Orange Park initially parked outside a Family Dollar store at Kings Road and Myrtle Avenue, then left after a security guard patrolled the lot. He was then seen donning a bulletproof vest and a mask at Edward Waters University, a historically Black institution about a mile from the Dollar General.
The gunman then moved to the Dollar General with a Glock handgun and an AR-15-style rifle, with swastikas etched on one of the weapons, the sheriff said at the time.
He shot Carr outside, then Laguerre, an employee, and Gallion, a customer, before turning a gun on himself as police closed in. His parents found a diatribe in the computer that detailed the gunman’s hatred for Black people, Waters said. The man also left messages for the news media and the FBI that contained an “ideology of hate,” Waters said.
The memorials
An historical marker was unveiled on the first anniversary of the shooting, at a park within blocks of the Dollar General. A memorial done by community members, with images of the three victims, was built on the grass next to the store’s front sidewalk.
“My heart was broken,” Malcolm said of the 2023 shooting. “I couldn’t imagine that would have gone through anyone’s head. I was really sad that day.”
Some time on April 25 or 26, someone appeared to drive over the homegrown memorial. Malcolm said she saw the destruction as she drove home the next day from her job at the jail. She heard that someone planned to rebuild it. But no one did.
“I called (Dollar General) and I asked is anyone coming to clean it up, and they said this is city property, and they are not going to take care of it,” she said.
Three days later, still nothing had been done. So Malcolm said she was moved to do something. And last weekend, she joined her husband, children and community members, hit a home improvement store, and got decorative rocks, a concrete bench and other items and “put it all together.”
Another volunteer later added photos of Laguerre, Carr and Gallion.
“Everything is brand new,” said Malcolm, who lives further west off Kings Road. “I stop here every morning and every afternoon going home to make sure it is still here.”
Malcolm said she plans to make sure the memorial is maintained for years to come.
