He is not here to make friends
How killer was announced at video game event
THE crazed video gamer who shot dead two men after losing at a tournament had earlier been introduced to spectators as ‘Not here to make friends’.
An announcer had told the crowd: ‘You are not going to see much emotion. David Katz keeps to himself. He’s a man of business. He’s not here to make friends’.
Katz, 24, snapped when he lost what other gamers said was an ‘ intense’ elimination match in Jacksonville, Florida. It is thought he left the building and came back with a semi-automatic pistol.
He killed Taylor Robertson, 27, who was married with a young son, and eli Clayton, 22, and injured 14 others before shooting himself. A live video stream of the tournament caught the terrifying moment that a laser from Katz’s gun landed on Mr Clayton’s chest before shots rang out.
The shooting happened at a tournament on Sunday where 80 gamers competed for a prize of $5,000 (£3,900) at a pizza restaurant where they played American football game Madden NFL 19.
The gamer who beat Katz said: ‘After I beat him and went to shake his hand to say good game he just looked at me.’ Witnesses said Katz was ‘acting weird’ and wore sunglasses and the same clothes all weekend.
The gunman whose father worked for space agency Nasa, had ‘significant medical problems and healthcare needs’, according to court documents about his parents’ divorce. At a previous tournament Katz, a competitive gamer who went by the nickname Bread, was introduced as: ‘He’s not here for the experience…He’s all business, he’s focused. To even get him to open up to you to talk about anything is like pulling teeth’. He had won a Madden tournament in 2017 and bragged: ‘I think personally I’m one of the better players’. Casualty Tony Montagnino, 34, who was hit in the back, said he knew ‘everyone’ at the tournament but could not see Katz’s face when he opened fire because of the flare from the gun. ‘Once I saw the flashes, I didn’t want to stick around to try to ID him so I hit the floor and tried to find cover wherever I could. He added: ‘I was the lucky one. There’s two guys that you’ll never get to shake their hands at a tournament again.’ Police later raided Katz’s home in Baltimore, Maryland, and questioned his family. The incident was the latest mass shooting in Florida. A gunman killed 17 at a Parkland school earlier this year. Five were gunned down at the Fort Lauderdale airport last year and 49 were shot dead at a nightclub in Orlando in 2016. Florida governor Rick Scott said: ‘We have got to change. We’ve got to really stop and say to ourselves: There’s something wrong.’