JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The gunman in a shooting in Mississippi is connected to a deadly shooting Monday at Old Dominion Freight Line in Jacksonville, the Richland Police Department said.
Richland Police identified the shooter Wednesday as 50-year-old Alfred Tankersley of Orange Park.
In the Jacksonville shooting, 50-year-old Marty Coffey was shot and killed by a suspect driving a white car outside Old Dominion on the Westside.
The Richland Police Department said it appeared that Tankersley traveled to Mississippi after the shooting in Jacksonville.
Tankersley shot an employee at Southeastern Freight Lines and then killed himself, police said. The victim drove himself to the hospital, after suffering several gunshot wounds.
Tankersley was terminated from a shipping company in 2015, and it appears that he targeted two individuals who might have been involved in the termination, police said.
A source said Tankersley briefly worked for Old Dominion Freight Line within last 10 months. He was asked to resign due to work performance, the source said. Action News Jax is working to confirm the information with officials.
Detectives are looking at some writings that were left behind by the suspect. Police said the notes aren't suicide notes.
The victim that was hurt in Mississippi is still recovering and is expected to survive, police said.
The lead detective in Jacksonville is traveling to Mississippi to continue the investigation.
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Detectives with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office were at the Orange Park home of Tankersley Wednesday afternoon.
The detectives were seen walking around the property and speaking with neighbors.
One neighbor didn’t want to be identified, but said she saw the detectives at Tankersley’s home on Tuesday as well.
“I saw one cop car first, and he walked to the front and then he walked to the back of the house,” she said. “A few minutes later another cop car came.”
When the detectives came by on Tuesday, it would have been between the two workplace shootings.
Police say Tankersley targeted the two employees that were involved in his 2015 firing from Southeastern Freight Lines in Mississippi.
He worked at the trucking company for nearly eight years, and police believe he held a grudge.
Action News Jax Crime and Safety Expert Ken Jefferson said JSO was tracking Tankersley before the second shooting, but said prevention is difficult for law enforcement because officers can’t be in the workplace.
“They can’t monitor things in the parking lot if there’s nothing going on,” said Jefferson. “So it’s very difficult and it puts the onus back on the employer to look for signs of depression or disgruntled employees.”
Tankersley may have been an angry employee, but neighbors say he was quiet and not seen often.
“He’s was a loner, I guess,” one neighbor told us. “We just barely saw him.”
We asked officials with Southeastern Freight Lines about Tankersley’s firing, but they declined to go into details.