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The man suspected of fatally shooting a police officer and unleashing a barrage of bullets on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta on Friday had been fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the suspect’s father.
Patrick Joseph White, 30, blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Saturday.
The official said White’s father had contacted police and identified his son as the possible shooter, telling law enforcement that White had been upset over the death of his dog and had become heavily focused on the COVID-19 vaccine.
White also spoke about his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines in unrelated conversations, a neighbor of White’s told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Emergency vehicles line up near Emory University and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy)
“He was very unsettled, and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people,” Nancy Hoalst told the newspaper. “He emphatically believed that.”
Hoalst said that White “seemed like a good guy” and never believed he would become violent and target the CDC.
The law enforcement official told the AP that White was armed with five guns, including at least one long gun, when the attack unfolded.
Bullets hit at least four CDC buildings during the incident, Director Susan Monarez said in a post on X. Images shared by employees showed multiple agency buildings with bullet-pocked windows, underscoring the breadth of the damage to a site where thousands of scientists and staff work on critical disease research.
White is also suspected of killing DeKalb County Police Department Officer David Rose, 33, shortly before 5 p.m., the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said.
The Dekalb County Police Department identified David Rose as the officer killed in a shooting outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) campus in Atlanta on Friday. (DeKalb County Police Department)
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Other officers found Rose critically wounded at the scene. Rose was rushed to Emory University Hospital where he died from his injuries.
Rose, who previously served as a Marine in Afghanistan, graduated from the police academy in March. He is survived by his pregnant wife and two children.
A bullet hole is visible in the door of a CVS pharmacy on Saturday near where police say a man was shooting at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta the previous day. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy)
The responding officers who found Rose mortally wounded also heard additional gunfire coming from a nearby CVS pharmacy.
Officers entered a nearby pharmacy and located the shooter on the second floor with at least one gunshot wound. Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said it was not clear if the wound came from police gunfire or if it was self-inflicted.
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The GBI said the crime scene was “complex” and the investigation would take “an extended period of time.”
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan and Landon Mion, along with the Associated Press, contributed to this report.