ALACHUA, Fla. – The man who fatally shot two deputies at a Chinese restaurant in Florida was armed with two rifles and a handgun when he "assassinated" his men, a sheriff said Friday.
Fifty-nine-year-old John Hubert Highnote was described Friday as a white male, overweight and balding with a white beard.
"He is described as a recluse and a loner by the few people who knew him," Gilchrist County Sheriff Robert Schultz said. "His neighbors did not see him, nor were they even able to describe him."
Highnote had no presence online, and investigators are still trying to find people who knew him in Bell, a town of fewer than 500 people surrounded by farmland and ranches where he had lived for years.
Highnote killed himself after walking casually into the Ace China restaurant in nearby Trenton on April 19 and shooting Sgt. Noel Ramirez and Deputy Taylor Lindsey as they ate lunch, police said.
Schultz said Highnote had carried "ample ammunition" for all the weapons he possessed.
The sheriff says that before the shooting, Highnote had driven to a previous employer's business but fled as employees approached him.
The only photograph of Highnote that investigators have obtained is his driver's license, Schultz said. The sheriff refused to release it.
Highnote had no criminal record other than some traffic tickets, court records show. He was arrested for felony carrying a concealed firearm in 1978, a charge later dropped after he successfully completed a pre-trial intervention, Pinellas County court records show.
"The violence he perpetrated on Noel and Taylor can never be explained. They were simply assassinated while having a meal," Schultz said.
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