Florida yoga studio attack leaves 3 dead, including shooter


Two people were killed and five more injured when a shooter identified as Scott Paul Beierle, 40, opened fire in a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio Friday evening. Beierle also killed himself.
The two women killed have been named as Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, and Maura Binkley, 21. Van Vessem was the chief medical director for Capital Health Plan and a faculty member at Florida State University, where Binkley was a student.
"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," said a statement from the university's president, John Thrasher. "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."
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Beierle is believed to have acted alone for reasons presently unknown. "We're all very saddened and shocked by the events that occurred," said Michael DeLeo, Tallahassee's police chief, "but it's important that people understand that there is no immediate threat outside of what has already occurred this evening."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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