Witnesses say gaming loss prompted shooting
Police search for motive after US state suffers third mass shooting in two years
FLORIDA — Police searched on Monday for a motive in the third mass shooting in the US state of Florida in two years, which left two people dead and 11 wounded in Jacksonville, before the gunman killed himself at a video game tournament.
Witnesses told local media that the gunman, identified by police as David Katz, 24, of Baltimore, was a disgruntled gamer, angry because he lost Sunday’s tournament. It was not clear if he knew his victims.
While police have not identified the victims, family members told Jacksonville CBS television station WJAX that the two people killed were Eli Clayton and Taylor Robertson, both were video game contestants.
The Miami Herald also identified the victims: Robertson, 27, of Ballard, West Virginia, and Clayton, 22, of Woodland Hills, California.
Robertson, a husband and father, was the winner of the tournament last year and Katz won it the year before, the Herald reported, citing family and friends posting on the internet.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s office said 11 other people were wounded by gunfire and at least two others were injured while fleeing the scene of Sunday’s shooting.
Police say Katz killed himself and his body was found near the bodies of the two shot dead at The Landing, a popular riverside shopping and restaurant spot in Jacksonville.
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams declined on Sunday to comment on possible reasons for the attack.
Police and FBI agents swarmed Katz’s home in South Baltimore late on Sunday, multiple media accounts said, including the Baltimore Sun.
Police also seized Katz’s vehicle parked nearby the tournament site.
The latest rampage occurred amid a debate over US gun laws that was given fresh impetus by the massacre in February of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
Two years ago a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
President Donald Trump has been briefed and is monitoring the situation in Jacksonville, the White House said.
The bar was livestreaming a football video game competition when the gunfire started, according to video shared on social media. In the video, players can be seen reacting to the shots and cries can be heard before the footage cuts off.
Taylor Poindexter and her boyfriend, Marquis Williams, had traveled from Chicago to attend the tournament, and they fled when the gunfire erupted. She said she saw Katz take aim at his victims.
“We did see him, two hands on the gun, walking back, just popping rounds,” Poindexter said. “I was scared for my life and my boyfriend’s.”
Another gamer, Chris “Dubby” McFarland, was hospitalized after a bullet grazed his head. “I feel fine, just a scratch on my head. Traumatized and devastated,” he wrote on Twitter.
The sheriff’s office said many people were transported to hospital, and its deputies found many others hiding in locked areas at The Landing.
Meanwhile, student gun control advocates and one of the survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on Sunday completed an 80-kilometer, four-day march in Massachusetts to the headquarters of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, where they protested gun violence and weapons manufacturing.
More than 100 protesters rallied outside company headquarters in Springfield. They held US flags and signs that read “We Can End Gun Violence” and “Books not Bullets”.