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Empire State Shooter’s Roots, a Shocked and Saddened Gainesville, GA

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Empire State Shooter Jeffrey Johnson’s 1971 Gainesville High School yearbook photo

The man who killed a former co-worker at the Empire State Building in New York was an active Gainesville High School student before graduating in 1971. Jeffrey Theodore Johnson participated in intramural athletics, the Pep Club and was the assistant art editor for the school newspaper, the “Trumpeter,” Superintendent Merrianne Dyer said in a press release Monday.

The school’s enrollment was about 900 then, so “most of the students there at this time knew one another,” she said.

Dyer added that school officials have been told he served in the U.S. Navy after high school, “but we have no indication of active alumni status or of social contacts from his high school years.

“The Gainesville community, like many, are shocked and saddened at this incident.” Johnson, 58, shot Steven Ercolino outside the Empire State Building on Friday, setting off a chaotic showdown with police in front of the landmark. Officers killed the gunman, and at least nine others were wounded, some by stray police gunfire.

Gainesville Police Cpl. Kevin Holbrook, spokesman for the department, confirmed Monday that police notified Johnson’s next of kin on Friday, when the shooting occurred.

Read more: Jeff Gill, Gainseville Times

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