MS. security officer involved in fatal shooting describes PTSD, health issues and lack of employer support
McComb MS July 16 2019
One year later and Kipper Breckenridge is breaking his silence regarding the deadly McComb Social Security Administration building shooting.
Breckenridge remembers July 9, 2018 starting off as a “pretty normal day.”
“It was quiet. It was no arguing. No conversation. They weren’t even talking to each other…”
He said but then chaos broke out.
“I’m sitting at my desk and next thing I hear is chairs scuffling, and I see the young man swinging at the women.”
That young man was 21-year-old Branen Carter from Marion County.
Breckenridge described seeing Carter swinging his arms in a “punching motion” towards his mother, but when he moved on to this grandmother, that’s when he says he saw the knife.
“I fired one round and I hit him in the torso. He fell… dropped the knife, I kicked the knife away from him… mother and grandmother both fell on the ground… and they were bleeding.”
Breckenridge tells WJTV 12’s Lanaya Lewis he remembers employees running out towards the fire station just two blocks away to get help.
He says once the fire department and first responders arrived, they told him “to step back and relax a moment.”
Carter later died from his injuries, while his mother and grandmother recovered in the hospital.
Breckenridge explained he took off a week after the incident, but in that same time the company he worked for, Inner Parrish Security Corporation (IPSC) lost the contract at the social security building he worked out.
He explained when he came back to work everything changed including his health.
“It set in about two or three weeks later… I started having severe headaches, neck pain… I was doubling over. I literally thought I had a brain tumor, my head was hurting so bad. I did not know that PTSD can manifest itself into physical pain.”
To make it worse, Breckenridge claims his employer had not taken his traumatic incident or his health serious.
He says this lack of concern is the exact reason why he wanted to speak out.
“I’m looking for change in the company and the federal government’s policies and procedures of dealing with an incident like this.”
Breckenridge added there’s way more to the story that he could explain, but he took the time to write it out on his Facebook page.
WJTV reached out to Mississippi Homeland Security for information about the July 9, 2018 incident and policies and procedures, but we have yet to hear back.
WJTV
