The father of the man who opened fire outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta earlier in August has said that his son was grappling with untreated mental health issues when misinformation convinced him that the Covid-19 vaccine was lethally sickening him.
“I know my son wanted to make this about ‘the jab’, and that was his latest cause, but this is more about mental health than anything,” Ken White said in a new interview with Atlanta News First.
White’s son, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White, fired more than 180 rounds at the CDC buildings in Atlanta on 8 August, according to authorities. The attacker fatally shot a police officer, David Rose, and then died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, investigators said.
In his new interview, Ken White said his son had asked to borrow his car to meet a friend in the hours before the shooting. But at about 5pm that day, White and his wife received a phone call from their son.
“I asked him how he was doing,” White recalled. “He said, ‘I’m gonna shoot up the CDC,’ and then he hung up.”
White said he “immediately tried to call him back” – but that Patrick had “turned the phone off”.
Moments later, White recounted, he saw a breaking news alert of an active shooter at the CDC and called 911. White said that he recognized his car on the television, confirming for him that it was his son who was the shooter.
“There’s nobody else it could be,” White said.
Several days after the shooting, authorities said that the firearms used in the attack were registered to Ken White, and that Patrick had stolen them from a safe. Authorities said that the weapons were securely stored, and that the gunman had “forced his way” into the safe that contained them.
“I don’t know how he got hold of the firearms, White remarked in the Atlanta News First interview. “We thought they were safe.
“I locked them up. I kept the key on my person 24-7, and I slept with it.”
Later in the interview, White said that “as much as we’re grieving for our son, [we’re grieving] for [slain] Officer Rose a whole lot more”.
The family said that Patrick had been displaying signs of mental illness during his last two years, including depression. But the family said that they did not know if he was ever formally diagnosed.
The family said that they found bottles of medication prescribed for depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that Patrick had left behind.
White said his son’s anger toward the CDC stemmed from Covid-19 vaccination misinformation.
Authorities also said that they recovered documents and electronic devices belonging to Patrick that reportedly “expressed the shooter’s discontent with the Covid-19 vaccinations” and said that Patrick had written about wanting to make “the public aware of his discontent with the vaccine”.
A neighbor separately told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Patrick was “very unsettled, and he very deeply believed that vaccines hurt him and were hurting other people”.
Ken White also confirmed that he and other members of his family were vaccinated. And it has been previously reported that Patrick was also vaccinated before he blamed the Covid-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal.
