A former Marine-turned-police officer, whom his mother called “fearless,” was killed as he confronted a gunman who attacked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month. Police officer David Rose, who spent four years in the Marine Corps, was shot while confronting a shooter who fired close to 500 rounds into labs and buildings at the nation’s top disease and vaccine research lab in Atlanta.
Rose died at nearby Emory University Hospital, where his mother said she had spent a career working as a nurse. The doctors and medical staff who worked to save him, Rose’s mother told local media, knew him personally.
“The same doctor that was working on him, he’s been to his house for Christmas parties,” Deveane Atkinson-Burnett, told local television stations. “People on different floors, everyone was [hoping], ‘No, it’s not one of ours.”
A Marine Corps spokesperson told Task & Purpose that Rose left the Marines in 2017 as a corporal after a four-year enlistment under the name Rasahn Patrick David Atkinson. An electrician in the Marines, he deployed to Kuwait for five months in 2015. Rose left the service with several non-combat awards and decorations typical of junior Marines in good standing, including a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.
His last duty assignment was with Marine Wing Support Squadron 374 in Twentynine Palms, California.
Top Stories This Week
After the Marines, Rose lived in the Atlanta area, where he had attended Peachtree Ridge High School, according to his family, and worked as a jailer in Gwinnett County before signing on as a police officer in DeKalb County. He graduated from the force’s police academy in September 2024.
Marine veteran told classmates ‘we are ready’
At the Academy, he was the leader of his graduating class and delivered a speech at the graduation ceremony that echoed common Marine Corps values.
“When we step onto these streets, we are ready. When someone calls for help, we don’t hesitate. When things get tough — and they will — we don’t break,” Rose said. “This is more than a career, it’s a calling. And today we answer that call.”
On Aug. 8, Rose was assigned to DeKalb’s northern precinct, about 10 miles from the CDC labs, which are on the Emory campus. Sometime that afternoon, Patrick Joseph White, 30, arrived at the CDC and began firing what would eventually be over 500 shots at the facility, shattering scores of windows.
No one other than Rose was hurt in the shooting spree. Many of the CDC’s facilities have been hardened against firearms in recent years and the shooter reportedly tried to enter the facility at least once. The health website Helio reported that more than 90 children were locked down in a childcare facility on the campus as a result of the attack.
Authorities said investigators found writings and social posts by White that indicated he subscribed to many false COVID-19 vaccination conspiracies, which often invoke the doctors and medical researchers at the government-run CDC in their narratives.
White eventually killed himself as police surrounded him.
Atkinson-Burnett said she was not surprised that Rose was one of the first to respond.
“Even though he was new there, when he heard that, he would know how to get there quick. He knows the area,” Atkinson-Burnett told television reporters. “Fearless. To put it in one word, fearless. One hundred percent giving himself at everything all the time.”
