JACKSONVILLE, Florida (AP) — The pastor of a church near the site of the racist fatal shooting of three black people told congregants Sunday to follow Jesus Christ’s example and keep their sadness from turning to rage.

The shooting devastated an historically black neighbourhood in Jacksonville Saturday as thousands visited Washington, DC, to attend the Reverend Al Sharpton’s 60th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr delivered his historic ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.

The latest in a long history of American racist killings was at the forefront of Sunday services at St Paul AME Church, about three miles from the crime scene.

“Our hearts are broken,” the Reverend Willie Barnes told about 100 congregants Sunday morning. “If any of you are like me, I’m fighting trying to not be angry.”

The choir sang Amazing Grace before ministers said prayers for the victims’ families and the broader community. From the pews, congregants with heads bowed answered with “Amen.”

A masked white man carried out the shooting with at least one weapon bearing a swastika inside a Dollar General store, leaving two men and one woman dead.

The shooting happened just before 2:00 pm within a mile of Edward Waters University, a small, historically black university. In addition to carrying a firearm painted with a symbol of Germany’s Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s, the shooter issued racist statements before the shooting.

He killed himself at the scene.

The police said the gunman, who was in his 20s, wore a bullet-resistant vest and used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. He acted alone and there was no evidence that he was part of a group.

Officials said the shooter wrote statements to federal law enforcement and the media that contained evidence suggesting that the attack was intended to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of two people during a video game tournament in Jacksonville by a shooter who also killed himself.