A brooding military veteran and former teacher who railed at women and blacks in a series of poorly lit videos shot two women to death and wounded five other people at a Florida yoga studio before killing himself.
The Friday evening shooting at a busy upscale shopping plaza jolted the state capital and police said they were still searching for a motive that led to the deaths of a Florida State University student and a well-known local doctor who was a member of the school faculty.
But details about 40-year-old Scott Paul Beierle began to emerge in the hours after, including that he had once been banned from FSU's campus and had been arrested twice for grabbing women even though the charges were ultimately dropped.
Beierle, who had moved to the central Florida town of Deltona after getting a graduate degree from FSU, also appear to post a series of videos on YouTube in 2014 where he called women "whores" if they dated black men, said many black women were "disgusting" and described himself as a misogynist.
He said promiscuous women deserved to be crucified and he suggested putting up land mines to keep people from crossing into the US from Mexico. The existence of the videos was first reported by BuzzFeed.
Tallahassee police say Beierle shot six people and pistol-whipped another after walking into the yoga studio that sits on the second floor of a shopping centre located near the city's fashionable midtown neighborhoods. Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo said some in the studio showed courage by trying to stop him.
Witnesses at the shopping centre described how people who had been in the studio ran away, seeking shelter in nearby bars and restaurants as shots rang out. Police responded within a few minutes, but by then Beirele had fatally shot himself, leaving police to search for a motive and a community to wonder what prompted the violence.
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"It's a place that brings me joy and peace, and I think it's ruined," said Katie Bohnett, an instructor at the yoga studio who skipped her normal Friday practice to meet a friend for dinner.
"This monster ruined it." Police said Beierle acted alone but they were still looking into what prompted the shooting. He was originally from New York, had served in the military and once was a teacher in Maryland. After his military service, he wound up attending FSU.
Kristi Malone, who had a graduate class with Beierle, said in a Facebook message that she did not interact with him outside of the classroom because of "his odd leering, inappropriate comments and general demeanor."
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