The man who fired more than 180 shots at the headquarters of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention broke into a locked safe to get his father's guns and intended to protest COVID-19 vaccines, US authorities said.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Director Chris Hosey said documents found during a search of the home where Patrick Joseph White lived with his parents “express the shooter's dissatisfaction with the COVID-19 vaccination.”
Mr Hosie said White, 30, had expressed a desire to “communicate his dissatisfaction with the vaccine to the public”.
White had also recently shared suicidal thoughts, which led to him contacting law enforcement in the weeks before the shooting, Mr. Hosie added.
He died at the scene on Friday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing a police officer.
Asked about threats related to misinformation about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its work on a vaccine, FBI Special Agent Paul Brown said Tuesday: “We have not seen an uptick, although we take very seriously any rhetoric that implies or leads to violence.”
“While we are monitoring it and responding to it, we have not seen a significant increase,” added Mr. Brown, who heads the FBI's Atlanta division.
The suspect's family is fully cooperating with the investigation, authorities said at a briefing on Tuesday.
Mr Hosie added that White had no criminal history.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
