U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of a shooting that locked down the federal facility for hours and killed a police officer.
Kennedy is slated to be present for a commemorative event around 10:30 a.m. that is open to employees of the federal agency, a CDC spokesperson confirmed. The event is not public.
The agency has a plaque marking the incident in its main lobby and the name of CDC Parkway, located off Clifton Road, will be changed to Officer David Rose Parkway.
Last year, on Aug. 8, a gunman opened fire outside of the CDC. Upward of 500 rounds were shot at several buildings shortly after 5 p.m. Rose, a responding DeKalb police officer, was killed in the shooting.
Fresh flowers have been placed at the makeshift memorial for Rose that has sat at the entrance to the CDC since last year. Every car pulling into campus passes a sign memorializing the officer, but the scene has been otherwise quiet in the lead up to Kennedy’s arrival.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
No CDC employees were injured in the shooting, but it prompted lengthy lockdowns.
The gunman, Patrick Joseph White, eventually turned a gun on himself and was found dead on the second floor of a CVS across the street from the CDC.
Officials said at the time that he left his family’s Kennesaw-area home that day with five weapons, including rifles, a shotgun and a handgun. At his home, investigators found a “written document that expressed the shooter’s discontent with the COVID-19 vaccinations,” authorities said.
When CDC employees were asked to return to work in mid-September, dozen of bullet holes remained visible. Some of roughly 150 windows were shattered in the shooting.
— This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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