The man who opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and killed a police officer has been identified as 30-year-old Georgia resident Patrick Joseph White.
Investigators believe that White, who killed a police officer on Friday, targeted the CDC because of a hatred of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to CNN. White, who was either ill or believed himself to be ill because of the vaccine, died at the scene, though it is not known whether he was shot or killed himself.
White lived in Kennesaw, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, where the CDC headquarters are located and the shooting took place.
Neighbors of White’s told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he lived at home with his parents and helped out around the neighborhood by mowing lawns, trimming shrubs, and walking dogs.
Nancy Hoalst, who lived across the street from White, said she noticed a change in his behavior in recent months as he grew fixated on the COVID vaccine.
“He was very unsettled, and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people,” Hoalst told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He emphatically believed that.”
She said that she was not aware that White had any violent impulses. “I didn’t know he had those tendencies,” she said. “I had no idea he thought he would take it out on the CDC.”
Hoalst otherwise remembers White as friendly—she recalled that he blew leaves off her driveway ahead of Halloween.
“He seemed like a good guy,” she said. “He would volunteer to walk dogs. He did good things.”
Another neighbor, Josh Shira, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he “thought [White] was a pretty stand-up guy—quiet, but never confrontational.”
“I was never worried about him doing something like this,” Shirah added.
White opened fire on CDC buildings around 5 p.m. on Friday, taking aim from a CVS pharmacy directly across the street from the entrance to the agency’s campus, prompting a lockdown and a shelter-in-place order.
The shooting, which occurred near the Emory University campus, created fear and anxiety for nearby residents, some of whom posted clips of the gunfire to social media.
During the shooting, White killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, who was responding to the scene. Rose, 33, had been on the job for nearly a year. He was married with two children—with another one on the way.
White was found shot dead on the second floor of the CVS.
Asked for comment, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told the Daily Beast that it has no other information to release at this time.
While the CDC was responsible for the roll-out of the COVID vaccines, the agency is now overseen by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has sought to dismantle its legacy.
Kennedy released a statement addressing the incident on Saturday.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic shooting at CDC’s Atlanta campus that took the life of officer David Rose. We stand with his wife and three children and the entire CDC family,” it read. “We know how shaken our public health colleagues feel today. No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others.”
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