2018 Tallahassee Yoga Studio Shooting

Overview

The 2018 Tallahassee Yoga Studio Shooting refers to the mass shooting at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee in Tallahassee, Florida on November 2nd, 2018. The shooter, Scott Paul Beierle, killed two people and wounded three, before fatally shooting himself.

Background

On the evening of Friday, November 2nd, 2018, 40-year-old Scott Paul Beierle posed as a customer to enter the Hot Yoga Tallahassee in Tallahassee, Florida and fired a handgun upon the occupants, killing two and wounding five, and fatally shooting himself at the scene.^[1]

Developments

Victims

The victims in the shooting were identified as 61-year-old Dr. Nancy Van Vassem and 21-year-old Maura Brinkley.^[2]

Van Vassem was a the chief medical director for Capital Health Plan. The organization said in a statement:

"Our Capital Health Plan family is deeply shocked and saddened about the tragic loss of our beloved friend and colleague, Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, among the other victims of this terrible incident.

"As CHP's longtime chief medical director, Nancy has been a guiding, visionary force in our daily work to serve the wellness and health care needs of thousands of families in this community. Her dedication, caring, leadership, humanity, and experience made her one of the most respected, inspiring, and accomplished medical professionals in the state and country. Our hearts are filled with sorrow and prayers for her family. We all have been so blessed to have Nancy in our lives."

Maura Brinkley's father said, "She just wanted to help other people. That's all she ever wanted to do[…]She hated gun violence so much. We just talked about how horrible and senseless this was, not ever dreaming that later it would be us."^[3]

Florida State University President John Thrasher said in a statement:

"There are no words to express the shock and grief we feel after learning of the deaths of Maura Binkley and Dr. Nancy Van Vessem. To lose one of our students and one of our faculty members in this tragic and violent way is just devastating to the Florida State University family. We feel this loss profoundly and we send our deepest sympathies to Maura's and Nancy's loved ones while we pray for the recovery of those who were injured."

Shooter

Scott Paul Beierle

The shooter Scott Paul Beierle was a self-proclaimed misogynist and far-right extremist, who in a series of YouTube videos, extolled the actions and beliefs of Elliot Rodger, the assailant in the 2014 Isla Vista mass shooting. According to BuzzFeed: ^[4]

On a YouTube channel in 2014, Beierle filmed several videos of himself offering extremely racist and misogynistic opinions, in which he called women 'sluts' and 'whores,' and lamented “the collective treachery” of girls he had gone to high school with."

"'There are whores in -- not only every city, not only every town, but every village,” he said, referring to women in interracial relationships, whom he said had betrayed 'their blood.'"

In another video from 2014, he said, "I’d like to send a message now to the adolescent males … that are in the position, the situation, the disposition of Elliot Rodger, of not getting any, no love, no nothing. This endless wasteland that breeds this longing and this frustration. That was me, certainly, as an adolescent"

Government Response

On the evening of the attack, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum tweeted, ^[5] "I’m deeply appreciative of law enforcement's quick response to the shooting at the yoga facility in Tallahassee today. No act of gun violence is acceptable. I'm in close communication with law enforcement officials and will be returning to Tallahassee tonight." The tweet received more than 9,600 retweets and 47,000 likes in three days.

Online Reaction

Various people wrote about the shooting online particularly the amount of mass shooting in America within a 10-day period. Politico writer Dan Diamond tweeted, "Mass shooters’ recent targets when killing innocent Americans – a grocery store – a synagogue – and now a yoga studio." The post received more than 600 retweets and 875 likes in three days (shown below, left).^[6]

Twitter user @breannaraspo tweeted,^[7] "I was originally signed up for an evening hot yoga class. This morning I woke up & felt my body needed it more then so I rescheduled.
This evening Tallahassee Hot Yoga had a gunman shoot during the class. I was suppose to be in that class. #StopGunViolence #HotYogaTallahassee." Within three days, the tweet received more than 2,000 retweets and 8,400 likes (shown below, right).

That day, Twitter^[8] published a Moments page about the shooting.

Search Interest

External References