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The active shooter suspect in Panama City Beach has been identified as 49-year-old Kevin Robert Holroyd. A spokesperson for the Bay County Sherriff’s Office says he is barricaded in an apartment in the Briarwood Apartments on Beck Avenue.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that three people have died as a result of the shooting at that Holyroyd is now in custody. A police official said that authorities made entry into the apartment that Holroyd was in but they are preceding with “extreme caution” after he reportedly soaked the apartment with gasoline.
Holroyd was previously wanted in a homicide investigation out of Walton County, Florida. The shooting took place at Briarwood Apartments on Beck Avenue in Panama City Beach, Florida. The Panama City Police, Bay County Sheriff’s Office, and Florida Highway Patrol were all on the scene.
via Fox:
The Bay County Sheriff’s Office confirmed multiple shots had been fired during the incident, but there had been “no shots from the suspect or [law enforcement] in the past hour,” just after 4:30 p.m.
Social media users posted photos and videos of SWAT officers and a large law enforcement presence along Beck Avenue, on the city’s west side. Several gunshots were audible in a live Facebook feed from the scene around 1:30 p.m.
The Bay County Sheriff’s Office said its bomb squad tried to breach the apartment’s front door with an “explosive technique,” but Holroyd had barricaded it from the inside.
The active shooting in Panama City Beach is just the latest in a string of threats, lockdowns, bomb threats, and active shootings that have plagued the United States.
Over the course of the past few years, shootings such as these have been a scourge upon the country and people have struggled with coming up with a solution. Lockdowns have become all too common as a means of protection when students and faculty are in danger and today is no different.
This incident follows similar incidents at Dodd Middle School in Connecticut, Windham Public Schools also in Connecticut, Pacoima Middle School in Los Angeles, Millennium Middle School in Florida, and US Grant High School in Oklahoma, which are just some of the places where events such as this have occurred.