A mother recalled the moment she thought she was going to lose her life while trapped inside of a Jacksonville, Florida Dollar General with her 2-year-old daughter during the racially motivated mass shooting on Saturday (Aug. 26).

During an interview with News4Jax, Mercedez Jones revealed she was shopping for art supplies with her toddler before she heard the gunfire. “I didn’t care if he shot me, just not my baby, please. The last moments I had with her, she was being bad,” she said. “I didn’t know the nature of the crime at the time. All I [knew] was, ‘I got to get my baby out of here.’ Then he came behind the store, and we saw him. He was like in military clothes, he had like this marine [outfit] on, a bulletproof vest and the biggest gun I have ever seen strapped around his shoulders and he just sat there, he watched us, he could have killed us all.”

“It was three other women, older women that worked there behind that building with me. Everybody else could jump, but I couldn’t. I had a baby. So, therefore, we [were] begging for our lives and I fell begging for mine, blocking my baby with my body and then he was like, ‘If you don’t want me to shoot you, run,'” she told the local news station. Jones ended up escaping to a nearby property where police came and found her.

As previously reported by REVOLT, a 21-year-old white man identified as Ryan Christopher Palmeter reportedly shot and killed three Black people inside of the Dollar General, which was located in a predominately African-American neighborhood. This attack was declared a hate crime by authorities. “This shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Sheriff T.K. Waters said during a press conference. “He wanted to kill n**gers.” He continued to describe Palmeter as a maniac who decided he wanted to take lives. “He targeted a certain group of people, and that’s Black people; that’s what he said he wanted to kill. And that’s very clear… Any member of that race at that time was in danger — of the Black race,” Waters added.