Florida shooter was disgruntled gamer
GUNMAN, IDENTIFIED AS 24-YEAR-OLD DAVID KATZ, WAS ANGRY BECAUSE HE LOST SUNDAY’S TOURNAMENT
Police searched yesterday for a motive in the third mass shooting in 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.
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.
Police and FBI agents swarmed Katz’s upscale town house 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 shooting took place during a regional qualifier for the Madden 19 online game tournament at the GLHF Game Bar inside a pizza restaurant, according to the venue’s website.
The winners of the contest go forward to the video game finals in Las Vegas and compete for $165,000. 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 live-streaming 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 travelled 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 told reporters. “I was scared for my life and my boyfriend’s.” Another gamer, Chris “Dubby” McFarland, was hospitalised after a bullet grazed his head. “I feel fine, just a scratch on my head. Traumatised and devastated,” he wrote on Twitter.
A spokesman for Jacksonville’s Memorial Hospital said it was treating three victims, all of whom were in stable condition.