Yoga student used broom to fight off Florida killer

A yoga student may have saved lives by using a broom to fight off a gunman who fatally shot two people at a yoga studio in Florida on Friday night.

Joshua Quick told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he grabbed Scott Beierle’s gun after it jammed, and struck him.

“I jumped up as quickly as I could,” Quick, who suffered facial injuries, told “GMA” on Sunday. “I ran back over and the next thing I know I’m grabbing a broom, the only thing I can, and I hit him again.”

The 40-year-old Beierle is accused of killing two people and injuring five others at Hot Yoga Tallahassee, including Quick. Daniela Garcia Albalat, who was shot, credits Quick with “saving my life.”

“Thanks to him I was able to rush out the door,” she told ABC News.

Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, and 21year-old Florida State University student Maura Binkley were killed. Beierle, who crashed the Friday night class and started shooting, took his own life.

It was revealed over the weekend that Beierle had recorded a series of misogynistic videos and had been arrested twice for grabbing women’s buttocks without their consent.

He posted a series of videos on YouTube in 2014 on which he called women “whores” if they dated black men and said many black women were “disgusting.”

Beierle described himself as a misogynist in the videos. In one of them he said loose women deserved to be crucified, and he suggested using land mines to keep people from coming to the U.S. from Mexico.

The existence of the videos was first reported by BuzzFeed.

Beierle, a military veteran and former teacher, had moved to the central Florida town of Deltona after getting a graduate degree from Florida State University. He had previously lived in upstate Vestal, N.Y., according to the Tallahassee Democrat, and had attended Binghamton University.

Kristi Malone, who was in a graduate class with Beierle at Florida State Univerisity, said in a Facebook message to The Associated Press that she did not interact with him outside of the classroom because of “his odd leering, inappropriate comments and general demeanor.”

“I know that myself and several of my female colleagues made a point to never be alone with him even at school because of his odd behavior,” she said.