Armed with five guns, Patrick Joseph White, 30, killed one police officer after firing multiple bullets at buildings across the CDC campus. He was initially denied entry into the headquarters. No other casualties were reported.
The shooter’s body was found in a building across the street from the CDC buildings, at least four of which were hit. Authorities are uncertain whether he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound or police gunfire, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said.
White is said to have been fixated on vaccines, which may have caused his disturbed mental state. His neighbor said he spoke with her multiple times about his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines.
“He was very unsettled, and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people,” Nancy Hoalst told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He emphatically believed that.”
Hoalst never suspected White would become violent. “I had no idea he thought he would take it out on the CDC,” she said.
White’s father also said his son was fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine and revealed he was upset about the death of his dog prior to the shooting.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, is facing pushback from a CDC union for not condemning vaccine misinformation after the incident.
Without mentioning vaccines, Kennedy issued a statement in response to the shooting.
EX-SURGEON GENERAL HITS RFK JR. ON ‘TEPID’ CDC SHOOTING RESPONSE: ‘TOOK HIM OVER 18 HOURS’
Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general during the first Trump administration, criticized Kennedy over his “tepid” response.
“It took him over 18 hours to issue a tepid response to these horrific shootings,” Adams told CBS News host Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation on Sunday morning, “and that’s not even considering how his inflammatory rhetoric in the past have actually contributed to a lot of what’s been going on.”
