Police yesterday were seeking to determine a motive in a shooting in Florida that 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 man, identified by police as David Katz, 24, of Baltimore, was a disgruntled gamer, angry because he lost at the tournament on Sunday.
While police have not identified the people killed, family members told Jacksonville CBS television station WJAX that Eli Clayton and Taylor Robertson — both video game contestants — had died.
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.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s office said 11 other people were wounded by gunfire and at least two others were injured while fleeing the scene of the shooting.
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.
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams on Sunday declined to comment on possible reasons for the attack.
Police and FBI agents swarmed Katz’s upscale townhouse 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, which, according to the venue’s Web site, was at the GLHF Game Bar inside a pizza restaurant.
The winners of the contest go forward to the video game finals in Las Vegas and compete for US$165,000.
US President Donald Trump has been briefed and is monitoring the situation in Jacksonville, the White House said.
The bar was livestreaming 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 traveled from Chicago to attend the tournament and they fled when the gunfire erupted.
She said she saw Katz take aim at people.
“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 hospitalized after a bullet grazed his head.
“I feel fine, just a scratch on my head. Traumatized and devastated,” he wrote on Twitter.
The sheriff’s office said many people were transported to hospitals and its deputies found many others hiding in locked areas at The Landing.
A spokesman for Jacksonville’s Memorial Hospital said it was treating three people, all of whom were in stable condition.
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