(CNN) — Employees at the top US public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were winding down their Friday when bullets smashed through their office windows, whizzing just over their cubicle walls. Inside the buildings, CDC employees felt like “sitting ducks,” some would later say in a meeting.
Across the street from the CDC campus, a gunman — possibly motivated by a hatred of vaccines — had opened fire on the agency’s buildings, bringing panic to the upscale Atlanta neighborhood and the sprawling, open-access campus of Emory University adjacent to it.
“Active shooter on Emory Atlanta Campus at Emory Point CVS. RUN, HIDE, FIGHT. Avoid the area. Continue shelter in place. Police on scene,” said a statement from the university.
One first responder, DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, was killed. A married father of two, with another on the way, Rose would have made one year on the job next month.
The shooting began just before 5 p.m. at the Emory Point CVS drugstore on Clifton Road, directly across from the main entrance to the CDC.
Residents and students on their way home and parents picking up children from day care were caught in a tense lockdown that stretched into the night.
Police sirens blared across the area as officers responded.
The gunman was found dead on the second floor of the CVS store. He was struck by gunfire, but police could not say if it came from officers or the gunman himself.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Saturday identified Patrick Joseph White, 30, a resident of the Atlanta suburb Kennesaw, as the shooter. The investigation into what led to the shooting is ongoing.
In the CDC offices, employees said the situation could have been much worse.
Photos viewed by CNN taken from inside one CDC building depict bullet holes in windows and shattered glass on the floor. The images show that rounds of ammunition flew just above a line of office cubicles where employees sit.
“It’s a miracle no one was killed here,” one CDC employee told CNN.
Authorities have not confirmed a motive, but sources told CNN the shooter may have targeted the CDC over personal health concerns he blamed on the Covid-19 vaccine.
Here’s what we know.
Why did the shooter allegedly target the CDC?
After speaking with family members of the suspect, police are operating under the hypothesis he was either sick or believed he was sick and blamed the illness on the Covid-19 vaccine, a law enforcement official told CNN.
The CDC, one of the world’s leading health agencies, is tasked with protecting the health of Americans. But it has come under fire during the second Trump administration as conspiracy theories continue to plague the vaccine credited with halting the spread of the global pandemic.
The shooting occurred the same week US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a longtime critic of Covid vaccinations, with a history of spreading vaccine misinformation – announced the cancellation of a half-billion dollars in investments in mRNA projects.
HHS said it would cancel federal funding for nearly two dozen mRNA vaccine projects.
On social media, Kennedy wrote on Saturday: “We are deeply saddened by the tragic shooting at CDC’s Atlanta campus that took the life of officer David Rose.”
Kennedy added “no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others.”
“Public health workers show up every day with purpose — even in moments of grief and uncertainty,” the health secretary said. “We honor their service. We stand with them. And we remain united in our mission to protect and improve the health of every American.”
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said the alleged shooter “is a known person that may have some interest in certain things that I can’t reiterate right now with any confidence until the investigation is fully conducted.”
CDC Director Susan Monarez said on X the shooter fired on at least four buildings.
Monarez informed CDC staff via email that they will work remotely on Monday while a “security assessment” is conducted. Employee assistance personnel were made available to workers, she said.
The gunman was wearing what appeared to be a surgical mask and was armed with two handguns, a rifle, a shotgun and two backpacks filled with ammo, according to law enforcement sources.
How the officer was shot
The gunman was firing at the CDC complex when an officer pulled up. The shooter turned his aim from the CDC complex to the officer, a law enforcement source told CNN’s Ryan Young.
Rose, 33, was shot and later died at Emory University Hospital. His mother was an ICU nurse at the same hospital for 17 years, according to DeKalb County spokesperson Dionna Smith.
Hayes Parsa, 17, saw Rose fighting for his life in hospital.
Parsa was leaving the Emory University Hospital and waiting for a bus when he got the emergency alert on his phone saying, “run, hide, fight,” he told CNN affiliate WSB. A police car pulled up and he ran back inside the hospital, where he witnessed staff performing chest compressons on the officer. “I prayed for him immediately,” he told WSB.
Rose “was committed to serving the community,” interim Police Chief Greg Padrick, said.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Rose was a hero who “made the ultimate sacrifice.”
“Pray for the family, friends, and colleagues of this hero who acted quickly to defend others and made the ultimate sacrifice,” Patel said in a post on X.
Group of CDC employees felt like ‘sitting ducks,’ they told leadership
In a large and hastily arranged Zoom call on Saturday, CDC leaders addressed rattled staff and acknowledged the Friday evening attack was targeted and deliberate.
“This was not stray bullets,” one leader acknowledged on the call, sharing updates from the authorities. CNN obtained copies of staff notes from the meeting, which were shared in a large employee group chat.
There were at least 40 bullet holes counted in buildings 21 and 24, as well as a few in a third building, 16. The buildings house much of the non-lab work at CDC.
About 800 staff on the call, many of whom work in the agency’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, were told the attack was carried out by a single shooter who had been reaching out for mental health assistance for weeks before the incident but had not made any threats ahead of time, according to two sources who spoke on the condition they not be named because they had not been authorized to share details with reporters.
It’s unclear who the shooter was reaching out to.
In a question-and-answer portion of the call, staffers tearfully told Monarez, the agency director, they felt like “sitting ducks.”
Leadership told staff on the call Saturday they might hear that their work was targeted as a possible motivation for the shooter.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry on the call acknowledged the trauma of staffers, whether they were in the building or not, saying leaders were “mad this happened.”
Monarez said CDC leaders have been in contact with the office of HHS Secretary Kennedy, according to staff notes obtained by CNN.
Monarez was also asked what the agency planned to do to address disinformation but agency leaders on the call did not directly respond.
Anxiety all over the Emory campus
The chaos touched many people including Randy Gold, who was leaving an elevator at Emory Hospital and rolling to the exit with his father, just discharged in a wheelchair, when they encountered doctors, nurses and valet parkers running toward them and “screaming there was an active shooter.”
At that point, Gold told CNN, nobody knew where that was happening, but they all went into sheltering mode.
“We sort of ducked,” he said as he was sheltering along with five or six people in the hospital’s radiology reading room. The only information they had at that moment was that the entire hospital was in lockdown, and what they learned while watching CNN as the incident developed.
Around campus, people were also trying to get a sense of what was happening. Police patrols on campus were increased over the weekend, according to the university.
Casey Cooksey, an employee of Emory University’s IT Department, told CNN affiliate WXIA, he heard “lots of gunfire” and described the scene as “total fear for everybody.”
“We had no idea where it was coming from, but it was pretty close. We thought it may be in our building.”
“It was just a bunch of rapid fire. It was a minute before we heard any sirens. It was just a lot of loud shooting.”
Toddlers on lockdown at nearby day cares
Roads near the Emory Point CVS, where the active shooter was located, were “like a ghost town,” and police stopped vehicles from driving closer, Kristin Coles told CNN affiliate WSB.
Anxious for her one-and-a-half-year-old son who was at a day care center across from the CVS, she drove as far as she could before police stopped her and walked about a mile to get closer.
Coles said her wife went to pick their son up, but they were separated in different classrooms due to the lockdown situation.
“I’m just trying to get to them as quickly as I can,” Coles said, stressing she has never experienced anything like this before.
“It just speaks to a lot of what needs to be done to keep our kids safe. This is ridiculous.”
There were also 92 children in a day care on the CDC campus, and all of them were safe, said Atlanta Mayor Dickens.
Natalie Feagin, the executive director of the Clifton School, a day care that serves CDC and Emory employees at two locations, told parents in an email that staff had specifically trained for active shooter scenarios and implemented a lockdown as soon as the shooting was reported.
Day care staff quickly “secured doors, silenced phones, closed blinds, and moved children into interior shelter spaces,” Feagin wrote. “Teachers comforted and cared for the children, helping them feel safe while we waited for updates from authorities.”
All children were safely united with their families by 11 p.m. local time, according to the email. Following the shooting, Feagin met with police “for an after-action discussion to further review our response and identify areas of strength and growth moving forward,” she added.
Threat to CDC employees
The violent episode at the federal health agency has added an unsettling new chapter to a turbulent period for the CDC and its staff.
Dickens said CDC employees have “had a tough go of it in the past year.”
“My heart goes out to you,” the mayor said.
“We are with you. We stand with you, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that we bring resolve to the situation.”
He referenced the “uncertainty” around CDC staff’s employment following massive workforce cuts at federal health agencies.
The agency has lost nearly a quarter of its staff since January. The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2026 would slash the agency’s funding by more than half.
Under the proposed reorganization, the CDC would lose additional programs. Some would be transferred to a new Administration for a Healthy America, while others – such as the National Center for Chronic Disease and Health Promotion – would be eliminated entirely.
CNN’s Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.