ATLANTA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A 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.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old shooter also tried to get into the CDC\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t said whether he was killed by police or killed himself. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
White\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
A voicemail left at a phone number listed publicly for White\u2019s family wasn\u2019t immediately returned Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s most prominent public health institutions.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are deeply saddened by the tragic shooting at CDC\u2019s Atlanta campus that took the life of Officer David Rose,\u201d Kennedy said Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how shaken our public health colleagues feel today. No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,\u201d his statement said.<\/p>\n
Some laid-off employees rejected the expressions of solidarity. <\/p>\n
\u201cKennedy is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC\u2019s workforce through his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust,\u201d the group Fired but Fighting said. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,\u201d Vought said in the video, obtained by ProPublica and the research group Documented. \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
A request for comment from Vought\u2019s agency was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of CDC staffers sheltered in place during the shooting and many couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
CDC workers already faced uncertain futures due to Trump administration funding cuts, layoffs and political disputes over their agency\u2019s mission. \u201cSave the CDC\u201d 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. <\/p>\n
This shooting was the \u201cphysical embodiment of the narrative that has taken over, attacking science, and attacking our federal workers,\u201d said Sarah Boim, a former CDC communications staffer who was fired this year during a wave of terminations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s devastating,\u201d said Boim, who helped to start an advocacy organization for the former employees called Fired But Fighting. \u201cWhen I saw the picture of those windows having been struck by bullets, I really lost it,\u201d she said, her voice cracking.<\/p>\n
Without naming White on Friday night, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens described the gunman as a \u201cknown person that may have some interest in certain things.\u201d He did not name a motive.<\/p>\n
A neighbor of White told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that White spoke with her multiple times about his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n
Nancy Hoalst, who lives in the same cul-de-sac as White\u2019s family, said he was friendly and \u201cseemed like a good guy,\u201d doing yard work and walking dogs for neighbors. But Hoalst said White would bring up vaccines even in unrelated conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very unsettled and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people,\u201d Hoalst told the Journal-Constitution. \u201cHe emphatically believed that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hoalst said she never believed White would be violent: \u201cI had no idea he thought he would take it out on the CDC.\u201d<\/p>\n
A voicemail left at a phone number listed for White\u2019s family in public records was not immediately returned Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
Authorities don\u2019t know whether White died from police fire or a self-inflicted gunshot, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said Friday.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Rose, 33, was a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and graduated from the police academy in March and \u201cquickly earned the respect of his colleagues for his dedication, courage and professionalism,\u201d DeKalb County said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis evening, there is a wife without a husband. There are three children, one unborn, without a father,\u201d DeKalb County Chief Executive Lorraine Cochran-Johnson said Friday. <\/p>\n
Outside the complex that includes the CVS and four floors of apartments above the store, some people came to examine what had happened. <\/p>\n
Sam Atkins, who lives in Stone Mountain, said gun violence feels like \u201ca fact of life\u201d now: \u201cThis is an everyday thing that happens here in Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cfear, anger and worry to all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A Georgia man who opened fire on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[80828,1582,276,9361,16460,64889,58259,5025,5208,80827,2961,224,5337,80826,3546,7207,66160,80825,3851,45000],"class_list":{"0":"post-133611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bullet","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-campus","12":"tag-cdc","13":"tag-covid-19-vaccine","14":"tag-cvs-pharmacy","15":"tag-fire","16":"tag-friday","17":"tag-health-agency","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-nancy-hoalst","22":"tag-people","23":"tag-police","24":"tag-shooter","25":"tag-tragic-shooting","26":"tag-white","27":"tag-window"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115002900751493133","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}