ATLANTA — A Georgia man who opened fire on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, shooting dozens of rounds into the sprawling complex and killing a police officer, had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Saturday.
The 30-year-old shooter also tried to get into the CDC’s offices but was stopped by guards before driving to a pharmacy across the street and opening fire late Friday afternoon, the official said. He was armed with five firearms, including at least one long gun, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose was mortally wounded while responding to the shooting. The gunman, whom the Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified as Patrick Joseph White, died at the scene, but authorities haven’t said whether he was killed by police or killed himself.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose skepticism of vaccine safety has been a cornerstone of his career, voiced support for CDC employees Saturday. But some laid-off CDC employees said Kennedy shares responsibility for the violence and called on him to resign.
White’s father contacted police and identified his son as the possible shooter, the law enforcement official told AP. The father said White had been upset over the death of his dog, and had also become fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the official. The family lives in Kennesaw, Ga., an Atlanta suburb about 25 miles northwest of CDC headquarters.
A voicemail left at a phone number listed publicly for White’s family wasn’t immediately returned Saturday morning.
Police say White opened fire at the campus from across the street, leaving gaping bullet holes in windows and littering the sidewalk outside a CVS pharmacy with bullet casings. The attack prompted a massive law enforcement response to one of the nation’s most prominent public health institutions.
At least four CDC buildings were hit, CDC Director Susan Monarez said in a post on X, and dozens of impacts were visible from outside the campus. Images shared by employees showed bullet-pocked windows in agency buildings where thousands of scientists and other staffers work on critical disease research.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic shooting at CDC’s Atlanta campus that took the life of Officer David Rose,” Kennedy said Saturday.
“We know how shaken our public health colleagues feel today. No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,” his statement said.
Some laid-off employees rejected the expressions of solidarity.
“Kennedy is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC’s workforce through his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust,” the group Fired but Fighting said.
The group also called for the resignation of Russell Vought, pointing to a video recorded before President Trump appointed him Office of Management and Budget director with orders to dismantle much of the federal government.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in the video, obtained by ProPublica and the research group Documented. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down.”
A request for comment from Vought’s agency was not immediately returned.
Hundreds of CDC staffers sheltered in place during the shooting and many couldn’t leave for hours afterward Friday as investigators interviewed witnesses and gathered evidence. The staff was told to work from home or take leave on Monday.
CDC workers already faced uncertain futures due to Trump administration funding cuts, layoffs and political disputes over their agency’s mission. “Save the CDC” signs are common in some Atlanta-area neighborhoods, and a group of laid-off employees has been demanding that elected officials take action against the federal cuts.
This shooting was the “physical embodiment of the narrative that has taken over, attacking science, and attacking our federal workers,” said Sarah Boim, a former CDC communications staffer who was fired this year during a wave of terminations.
“It’s devastating,” said Boim, who helped to start an advocacy organization for the former employees called Fired But Fighting. “When I saw the picture of those windows having been struck by bullets, I really lost it,” she said, her voice cracking.
Without naming White on Friday night, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens described the gunman as a “known person that may have some interest in certain things.” He did not name a motive.
A neighbor of White told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that White spoke with her multiple times about his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines.
Nancy Hoalst, who lives in the same cul-de-sac as White’s family, said he was friendly and “seemed like a good guy,” doing yard work and walking dogs for neighbors. But Hoalst said White would bring up vaccines even in unrelated conversations.
“He was very unsettled and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people,” Hoalst told the Journal-Constitution. “He emphatically believed that.”
But Hoalst said she never believed White would be violent: “I had no idea he thought he would take it out on the CDC.”
A voicemail left at a phone number listed for White’s family in public records was not immediately returned Saturday morning.
Authorities don’t know whether White died from police fire or a self-inflicted gunshot, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said Friday.
White had been armed with a long gun, and authorities recovered three other firearms at the scene, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
The CVS remained closed Saturday morning, with one bullet hole in its front door and two more in a rear door. A bouquet was placed outside the building.
Rose, 33, was a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and graduated from the police academy in March and “quickly earned the respect of his colleagues for his dedication, courage and professionalism,” DeKalb County said in a statement.
“This evening, there is a wife without a husband. There are three children, one unborn, without a father,” DeKalb County Chief Executive Lorraine Cochran-Johnson said Friday.
Outside the complex that includes the CVS and four floors of apartments above the store, some people came to examine what had happened.
Sam Atkins, who lives in Stone Mountain, said gun violence feels like “a fact of life” now: “This is an everyday thing that happens here in Georgia.”
Monarez, the newly confirmed CDC chief, hailed the police response and called off in-person work Monday, telling staff in a Friday email that the shooting brought “fear, anger and worry to all of us.”
Amy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.