ATLANTA (AP) — The man who fired more than 180 shots with a long gun at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention broke into a locked safe to get his father's weapons and wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines, authorities said Tuesday.
Underscoring the level of firepower involved, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said more than 500 shell casings were recovered from the scene. Authorities haven’t said how many shots were fired by Patrick Joseph White and how many by police. The GBI said forensic testing was still pending.
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This photo provided by Georgia Bureau of Investigations Patrick Joseph White. ( Georgia Bureau of Investigations via AP)
The notable bullet marks on the windows of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters are visible on Sunday Aug. 10, 2025. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Chris Hosey, Director of Georgia Bureau of Investigation, speaks about the details of the shooting near the CDC and Emory University at the GBI headquarters, Tuesday, Aug., 12, 2025, in Decatur, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
People leave flowers Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, at a makeshift memorial in honor of David Rose, the officer who was killed in the shooting at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Charlotte Kramon)
Documents found in a search of the home where White had lived with his parents “expressed the shooter’s discontent with the COVID-19 vaccinations,” GBI Director Chris Hosey said.
White, 30, had written about wanting to make “the public aware of his discontent with the vaccine,” Hosey added.
White also had recently verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting, Hosey said. He died at the scene Friday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose.
The shooting reflects the dangers public health leaders have been experiencing around the country since anti-vaccine vitriol took root during the pandemic. Such rhetoric has been amplified as President Donald Trump's Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has repeatedly made false and misleading statements about the safety of immunizations.
“We know that misinformation can be dangerous. Not only to health, but to those that trust us and those we want to trust,” Dr. Susan Monarez told CDC employees in an “all-hands” meeting Tuesday, her first since the attack capped her first full week on campus as CDC director.
“We need to rebuild the trust together,” Monarez said, according to a transcript obtained by The Associated Press. “The trust is what binds us. In moments like this, we must meet the challenges with rational, evidence-based discourse spoken with compassion and understanding. That is how we will lead.”
White's parents have fully cooperated with the investigation of their son, who had no known criminal history, Hosey said Tuesday. With a search warrant at their home in the Atlanta suburb of Kennesaw, authorities recovered written documents and electronic devices that are being analyzed. Investigators also recovered five firearms, including a gun of his father's that he used in the attack, Hosey said.
White did not have a key to the gun safe, Hosey said: “He broke into it.”
CDC security guards stopped White from driving into the campus on Friday before he parked near a pharmacy across the street and opened fire from a sidewalk. The bullets pierced “blast-resistant” windows across the campus, pinning employees down during the barrage.
In the aftermath, CDC officials are assessing security and encouraging staff to alert authorities to any new threats, including those based on misinformation regarding the CDC and its vaccine work.
“We’ve not seen an uptick, although any rhetoric that suggests or leads to violence is something we take very seriously,” said FBI Special Agent Paul Brown, who leads the agency's Atlanta division.
Jeff Williams, who oversees safety at the CDC, told employees there is “no information suggesting additional threats currently.”
“This is a targeted attack on the CDC related to COVID-19," Williams said. “All indications are that this was an isolated event involving one individual.”
The fact that CDC's security turned him away “prevented what I can only imagine to be a lot of casualties," Williams said.
“Nearly 100 children at the childcare center were reunited with their parents at the end of the night,” he said. "The protections we have in place did an excellent job.”
Kennedy toured the CDC campus on Monday, accompanied by Monarez. “No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others,” Kennedy said in a statement Saturday, without addressing the potential impact of anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Kennedy refused to directly answer when asked during an interview with Scripps News on Monday what message he had for CDC employees who are worried about the culture of misinformation and skepticism around vaccines.
Although law enforcement officials have made clear the shooter was targeting the public health agency over the COVID-19 vaccine, Kennedy said in the interview that not enough is known about his motives. He described political violence as “wrong,” but went on to criticize the agency’s pandemic response.
"The government was overreaching in its efforts to persuade the public to get vaccinated and they were saying things that are not always true,” Kennedy said.
Some unionized CDC employees called for more protections. Some others who recently left amid widespread layoffs squarely blamed Kennedy.
Years of false rhetoric about vaccines was bound to “take a toll on people’s mental health,” and “leads to violence,” said Tim Young, a CDC employee who retired in April.
Contributors include Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island; Amanda Seitz in Washington, D.C.; and Kate Brumback in Atlanta.
This photo provided by Georgia Bureau of Investigations Patrick Joseph White. ( Georgia Bureau of Investigations via AP)
The notable bullet marks on the windows of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters are visible on Sunday Aug. 10, 2025. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Chris Hosey, Director of Georgia Bureau of Investigation, speaks about the details of the shooting near the CDC and Emory University at the GBI headquarters, Tuesday, Aug., 12, 2025, in Decatur, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
People leave flowers Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, at a makeshift memorial in honor of David Rose, the officer who was killed in the shooting at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Charlotte Kramon)
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Police blasted water cannons Wednesday at protesters in Northern Ireland who set small fires and hurled bricks, rocks and bottles at them during a second night of violence over a brutal stabbing on a Belfast street.
Demonstrators wearing masks tore bricks from the walls outside homes and smashed sidewalks with sledgehammers to toss at riot police. In one place, the unruly crowd used sections of a dismantled a picket fence to take cover on the street.
The clashes with police came several hours after a 30-year-old man from Sudan appeared in a Belfast court charged with attempted murder in a stabbing attack that left a man seriously injured and triggered anti-immigrant violence.
Hadi Alodid, 30, was ordered held in jail after appearing by video in Belfast Magistrates’ Court, where a detective said he blinded Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye during the knife attack. He was also charged with possessing a knife and threatening to kill a radiographer while being treated for a hand injury after the assault.
When police arrived at the crime scene, they found Alodid on the man, armed with a kitchen knife, the detective said. Alodid later told hospital staff: “I’ve killed someone, I don’t know if they are dead,” and said, “I will kill you."
He refused legal representation through an Arabic interpreter and did not enter a plea.
Police were prepared for more violence after masked men on Tuesday set fire to several homes they believed to house immigrants, burned trash bins, torched a Belfast bus and pelted police with objects.
Firefighters rescued several people from burning houses and more than two dozen people were left homeless.
Anselme Shima, a Belfast resident originally from Congo, said he saw smoke from burning vehicles near his home.
“I’ve lived on my street for almost 10 years, I have a good relationship with my neighbors, but last night was a horrific one,” he said. “We don’t know what to do. I’m scared. Seeing this, I’m wondering if I’m next.”
Families, one with a baby, were rescued and taken to police stations for safety, Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said.
“These weren’t just families from ethnic minority communities, these were families from across communities that were caught up in this vile behavior last night," Boutcher told the BBC. “There is absolutely no excuse for it.”
Boutcher said 200 more officers would be on the streets Wednesday and the PSNI was calling in support from other forces. Bus and train operators in Belfast said they would stop services early because of expected protests.
Ogilvie’s family appealed for an end to the violence and said migrants “make a deeply valuable contribution to our country.”
“We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,” the family said in a statement.
Politicians from both parts of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government condemned the violence. First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein said it was “thuggery.”
“Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she said.
Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said that “taking frustration at the evil actions of a person out on those who had no part in it is utterly wrong.”
Monday’s attack, caught in video footage that quickly spread on social media, was seized on by anti-immigration activists. Ogilvie, a man in his 40s, was hospitalized with deep cuts to his head, face and back.
Police said Alodid entered Northern Ireland from the neighboring Republic of Ireland in 2023, applied for asylum and was given a 5-year permit to remain.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said there is no information to suggest the attack was terrorism-related.
Protests were encouraged online by far-right activists, and the street violence erupted despite politicians' calls for calm.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the stabbing attack as “sickening,” but said violence against people based on their background would not be tolerated.
“The scenes in Belfast last night were shocking and completely unacceptable," Starmer said on X. “There is no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere.”
Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long said social media agitators who “yesterday would have struggled to find Belfast on a map” were “weaponizing” the fears of local people.
“If you’re driving people from their homes based on nothing but the color of their skin, you can’t dress that up any other way, it’s racism, and those bad faith actors need to take a step back,” she told the BBC.
Some politicians said the stabbing should spark a review of the open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland.
The border is a highly sensitive issue. Allowing the free flow of people is a major pillar of the peace process that largely ended decades of violence known as “The Troubles.” The conflict involving Irish Republican and British Loyalist militants and U.K. security forces left almost 3,600 people dead before a 1998 peace accord.
Much of Tuesday’s violence took place in working-class areas where former paramilitary groups still hold considerable sway over the streets.
Last week a separate case of a university student who was stabbed to death in Southampton, England, in December was seized on by activists and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the violence, an idea rejected by Starmer and other British politicians.
Henry Nowak, who was white, was killed by Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh who falsely claimed to police that he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded Nowak as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.
Digwa was convicted of murder and sentenced last week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term. A protest over Nowak’s death turned violent, with some attacking police with chairs and rocks. Several people were charged with violent disorder.
Lawless reported from London. Brian Melley contributed to this story.
Jamie Corrie stands beside his burnt out house after rioting broke out late Tuesday, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, following a stabbing incident. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Vehicles set on fire by protesters burn on Lendrick Street in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, after the arrest of a Sudanese man accused of stabbing a man in the northern part of the city. (PA via AP)
People watch as firemen arrive to put out vehicle that was set alight during a protest in East Belfast following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
This is a court artist drawing by Elizabeth Cook of Sudanese national Hadi Alodid, 30 appearing via videolink at Belfast Magistrates Court, Belfast, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, after a stabbing attack. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)
A worker clear up the debris in front of a burnt out bus, after rioting broke out late Tuesday, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, following a stabbing incident. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
A woman walks past burnt out houses after rioting broke out late Tuesday, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, following a stabbing incident. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
People watch as a vehicle burns during a protest following a stabbing incident in North Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
A building is set light to by protesters in central Belfast following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Masked protesters stand by burning trash containers on Ligoniel Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, after the arrest of a Sudanese man accused of stabbing a man in the northern part of the city. (PA via AP)
Police vehicles come under attack from protesters following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Vehicles set on fire by protesters burn on Lendrick Street in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, after the arrest of a Sudanese man accused of stabbing a man in the northern part of the city. (PA via AP)
