Gunman with groping past kills 2 in yoga class
5 also hurt before suspect takes own life in Tallahassee
A man in Florida, who repeatedly was accused of groping women, walked into a yoga class and opened fire Friday evening, according to Tallahassee police — shooting six people and killing two of them despite an attempt to fight him off.
Police said the shooting suspect, Scott Paul Beierle, 40, killed himself minutes before they arrived at the Hot Yoga studio, which sits above a row of restaurants at a northern Tallahassee shopping center.
“In my public service career, I have had to be on some bad scenes. This is the worst,” City Commissioner Scott Maddox wrote after viewing the attack’s aftermath. “Please pray.”
About a dozen people were inside Hot Yoga when a man with a black bag walked in about 5:30 p.m., the Tallahassee Democrat reported. The studio had advertised a Pilates certification class for the weekend.
Among the yoga students were 21-year-old Maura Binkley and 61-yearold Nancy Van Vessem — respectively a student and a faculty member at Florida State University, which later would mourn them both.
Police still were determining a motive behind the shooting.
Beierle had been arrested twice in the last six years by the university’s police, according to criminal records. The first time was in 2012, when two women accused him of grabbing their buttocks on campus, the Democrat reported.
He was detained again two years later for trespassing in a dining hall.
Both charges were dismissed, but Beierle was arrested by Tallahassee police in 2016 and that time agreed to a plea deal for misdemeanor battery. He had asked a sunbather at his apartment if he could put lotion on her, the Democrat reported, and groped her when she refused.
Survivors said Beierle kept walking in and out of the yoga studio as class began Friday evening, according to Melissa Hutchinson, who works at a restaurant below Hot Yoga.
“They said he just kept coming in and out the doors and was a little sketchy,” Hutchinson told the Democrat. “But nobody said anything.”
The man eventually stopped in the studio’s doorway, pulled a gun from the bag and loaded it in front of the students. Only then did people try to flee or fight.
“Everyone started pounding on the windows and the walls,” Hutchinson said. “I heard a couple people at Riccardo’s heard the pounding. They weren’t sure what it was. They said it sounds like someone was hitting sheet metal.”
Then the reports of gunshots soon filtered through the ceiling of Riccardo’s pizzeria, Food Glorious Food and the other establishments on the shopping center’s lower level.
Shanta Combs told the Democrat she was drinking with friends at Bar at Betton when she heard the bartender yell: “Active shooter, get down, get away from the window!”
Panicked and wounded people fled down a staircase from the studio and ran inside for shelter. Combs said she embraced a woman who couldn’t stop hyperventilating. Then “I see this kid in a white T-shirt with blood coming out of his forehead,” she said.
The “kid” had been pistol whipped while trying to fight off the gunman, police later said.
Another customer at the bar, Kristin Jacobs, was among several who praised his actions. “I am alive because one guy in a yoga class in his bare feet ran at a shooter,” she told the Democrat.
Police said the first officers arrived about three minutes after the 911 call, at 5:40 p.m. Seven people had been shot inside the studio, including Beierle, who appeared to have killed himself.
Four of the victims were expected to survive, including one whom the Democrat reported had been shot nine times.