Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live Today
Getting in, Getting Out
Aired October 23, 2002 - 10:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We continue our coverage on the D.C.- area shootings, and easy escape routes appear to be vital to the sniper's plan to hit-and-run in each of these cases.
With a look at the details of escape planning, we turn now to CNN firearms analyst, Eric Haney. He's a founding member of the Army's Delta Force elite fighting group. He's been talking about these cases with us for the past week or so.
And you have actually been to a couple of these shooting sites yourself, so you've got firsthand knowledge of exactly how you think these guys got away.
SGT. ERIC HANEY, CNN FIREARMS ANALYST: Right, I certainly have.
And what they're doing, he's meticulously selecting the place from which to shoot. Most of the shootings are prepared (ph) from inside a vehicle, so he's already completely ready to move as soon as the round is fired. And it appears that he is using the smaller, little feeder roads, he's staying off the main arteries, and he's moving at least two intersections before he runs into the first traffic light.
So, he has a freedom of movement until he's out of the immediate area and just away from the immediate observation of anyone who could have seen something happen.
HARRIS: All right, now walk us through what you think happened yesterday, and let's take a look at the shooting that happened yesterday in Silver Spring, Maryland.
HANEY: All right.
HARRIS: We've got this on the telestrator here. Let's see if we can go ahead and roll the first -- the satellite view and zoom in from the satellite all the way down to the park and see what it looks like.
HANEY: Well, as we saw yesterday, the driver of the bus was standing up on the steps of his bus, and he was shot from the wood line of the small park that was right there. And it seems to be -- let's see -- that we had the victim here. And just inside the woodland was the shooter himself.
Now, back inside of the area, here's a small pathway that comes to the other road.
HARRIS: Gotcha. HANEY: It appears that he probably stopped his vehicle on the back side there, moved into the wood line under cover of darkness, shot the victim, then moved straight back to his vehicle, and he makes his getaway.
And if you look about, he has a number of ways to go. First comes out left or right, but he's well away from any of the intersections. So, if he goes backwards, it appears backwards, but down the small feeder roads, there are no red lights, and he is immediately out of the area.
HARRIS: So, where do you think he had the vehicle parked?
HANEY: Oh, actually I believe that he placed the vehicle right on the edge of the roadway in the back side of the woods.
Now, that little wooded park is very small, you know, you don't have a scale from here, but it's no more than an acre or so. So, he had needed no more than 30 seconds to walk back to his vehicle.
HARRIS: But, again, if it was parked that way in the road in the open, I think it gets back to what we talked about yesterday in the morning, the fact that perhaps someone did see something but just didn't know what they saw.
Now, let's look at one of the other shootings in the time that we've got this morning. This is the shooting that happened in Manassas, again starting out from the satellite's view.
HANEY: And in we come. We do hope that we do that.
HARRIS: All right, let's see, we've got -- I think we have the technology. Here we go. There we go.
HANEY: Right. In this incident, when I looked at that site, the victim was pumping gas.
HARRIS: This was at the Sunoco station, correct?
HANEY: Yes, the Sunoco station down in Manassas, and he was pumping gas -- oh, let me see how I'll give you next event (ph) -- right here at the center island.
HARRIS: Gotcha.
HANEY: This spot where I'm going to highlight next with an "x" is a Petsmart store, I believe it was. And around the back of it is a small alleyway. OK. This is the longest shot that he's taken and hit someone. He fired from the back side of that Petsmart from that alleyway across a major roadway.
The significant thing was that he had some elevation, so that the vehicles on the roadway did not impede his shot.
HARRIS: Oh, OK. HANEY: And also significant is that that's a darkened area back there, and he shot at night. It was around 8:00 in the evening. And that little roadway allowed him to pull around the side unobserved from the back of that building, where no one else was parked, and then he had a multitude of areas to swing back out.
HARRIS: And again, coming out in the back way, would he have escaped that way, if that is the way he went?
HANEY: Yes.
HARRIS: No red lights back that way?
HANEY: No, none whatsoever. And it's significant, too, also that in a number of incidents when he's near an interstate, he's always one major intersection away from the interstate. Immediately, you're going to clamp those down, because it makes sense. Those are the high-speed avenues to get out of there. And you say interstate or this major road, the second intersection. But if he doesn't take those immediately, if all he's doing, as we said, swinging back out, going away, staying on the small surface roads, staying in the city streets and the county roads, he can get several minutes away from that area unimpeded.
HARRIS: All right, before the clamp-down comes.
HANEY: Yes.
HARRIS: Let's go to the next one then. The next one we have here is the shooting that happened in Bowie, Maryland, the school...
HANEY: Yes, oh, yes.
HARRIS: ... in which that young boy was shot. Let's take a look at that one. I'm very curious about this one, because they still not only -- I believe they've pinpointed where they believe the shot came from in this particular case.
HANEY: Yes, I went to that one specifically, because that one is so bothersome, and took a look at that one.
Let's see if we can put the x's and o's in here. The boy was shot right here at the entrance to his school.
HARRIS: And that's the front of the school.
HANEY: Yes, he was about 20 feet from turning right and walking in the front door. The shot was fired from right there, 75 meters away right in the edge of the woodland. He had a couple of large trees for cover, and there was a downed tree that had fallen that would have also covered him well.
HARRIS: Elevation in this case?
HANEY: Almost flat, but he was shooting across a little open yard area, but quite close, it's 75 meter when I paced it off. Back behind it here is a small tennis park, and then just slightly behind that where it's wooded is a car park area.
HARRIS: I see next to the baseball diamonds.
HANEY: Yes, indeed.
(CROSSTALK)
HANEY: Now, you couldn't even see the baseball diamonds. They're a little further back and the woods screen those. But once he fired that shot, all he did was walk through the park back here to where the vehicle was parked.
HARRIS: How far a walk is that? How quickly do you think someone could traverse that?
HANEY: That was the longest place he's ever moved that I can detect, and it's about 100 meters. So, how long does it take you to walk that? You can run if you're a good athlete in 10 seconds; if you calmly walk it, 30 seconds.
HARRIS: Yes, exactly.
HANEY: Or he...
(CROSSTALK)
HARRIS: A good 15, 20 seconds, he could run that probably.
(CROSSTALK)
HANEY: Right. So, less than a minute, and he's back in his vehicle. And if that...
HARRIS: Now, how did you get out from there once you get to the vehicle, though?
HANEY: Well, again, this is a suburban sort of area. There are small homes, there are small apartment buildings, and you can see up here into the right side, there's, you know, the housing tracts. But if you come out of that, the first supposition is you run to the interstate. That's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) clamp down.
But should you go the other direction, and in most cases I've found he's making right-hand turns, so he's never stopped by oncoming traffic. Had he gone in this direction, he's away from traffic lights...
(CROSSTALK)
HARRIS: What's back up behind all of this? Unfortunately, we can't get the map to show us what's back there.
HANEY: No, we can't.
HARRIS: But if he did come out that way and make nothing but right-hand turns and avoid this clover leaf, what is back there?
HANEY: It's just more of the same. It's more of the county. It's more of that area, and it's suburban, just like any suburban area in the United States. It all looks the same.
Now, I found interesting yesterday morning, one of the ladies who drove into the scene of the shooting and was speaking with a reporter on-site said, I ran into a number of police roadblocks at the major intersections, but I know this neighborhood, and I just came through the city streets and worked my way until I drove right up into position.
HARRIS: Which again gets back to something you've been saying all along. We're talking about someone who knows these areas very well, and perhaps someone who knows them as well as a deliveryman may know them.
HANEY: Well, obviously so. He can't know every place intuitively and utterly familiar -- with utter familiarity, but he goes to that location and he makes a thorough reconnaissance, he drives the routes, he picks the spots to shoot from. And I'm convinced he is timing himself from the time the shot is taken until he's in a vehicle, if he's been outside of the vehicle, until he can drive away to a point where he thinks, I'm outside of the immediate cordon that the police can slam down on me.
HARRIS: Eric Haney, thanks for the primer.
HANEY: OK.
HARRIS: It's rather sobering, but we need to know that nonetheless.
HANEY: OK.
HARRIS: Thanks very much -- appreciate it.
HANEY: Certainly.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired October 23, 2002 - 10:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We continue our coverage on the D.C.- area shootings, and easy escape routes appear to be vital to the sniper's plan to hit-and-run in each of these cases.
With a look at the details of escape planning, we turn now to CNN firearms analyst, Eric Haney. He's a founding member of the Army's Delta Force elite fighting group. He's been talking about these cases with us for the past week or so.
And you have actually been to a couple of these shooting sites yourself, so you've got firsthand knowledge of exactly how you think these guys got away.
SGT. ERIC HANEY, CNN FIREARMS ANALYST: Right, I certainly have.
And what they're doing, he's meticulously selecting the place from which to shoot. Most of the shootings are prepared (ph) from inside a vehicle, so he's already completely ready to move as soon as the round is fired. And it appears that he is using the smaller, little feeder roads, he's staying off the main arteries, and he's moving at least two intersections before he runs into the first traffic light.
So, he has a freedom of movement until he's out of the immediate area and just away from the immediate observation of anyone who could have seen something happen.
HARRIS: All right, now walk us through what you think happened yesterday, and let's take a look at the shooting that happened yesterday in Silver Spring, Maryland.
HANEY: All right.
HARRIS: We've got this on the telestrator here. Let's see if we can go ahead and roll the first -- the satellite view and zoom in from the satellite all the way down to the park and see what it looks like.
HANEY: Well, as we saw yesterday, the driver of the bus was standing up on the steps of his bus, and he was shot from the wood line of the small park that was right there. And it seems to be -- let's see -- that we had the victim here. And just inside the woodland was the shooter himself.
Now, back inside of the area, here's a small pathway that comes to the other road.
HARRIS: Gotcha. HANEY: It appears that he probably stopped his vehicle on the back side there, moved into the wood line under cover of darkness, shot the victim, then moved straight back to his vehicle, and he makes his getaway.
And if you look about, he has a number of ways to go. First comes out left or right, but he's well away from any of the intersections. So, if he goes backwards, it appears backwards, but down the small feeder roads, there are no red lights, and he is immediately out of the area.
HARRIS: So, where do you think he had the vehicle parked?
HANEY: Oh, actually I believe that he placed the vehicle right on the edge of the roadway in the back side of the woods.
Now, that little wooded park is very small, you know, you don't have a scale from here, but it's no more than an acre or so. So, he had needed no more than 30 seconds to walk back to his vehicle.
HARRIS: But, again, if it was parked that way in the road in the open, I think it gets back to what we talked about yesterday in the morning, the fact that perhaps someone did see something but just didn't know what they saw.
Now, let's look at one of the other shootings in the time that we've got this morning. This is the shooting that happened in Manassas, again starting out from the satellite's view.
HANEY: And in we come. We do hope that we do that.
HARRIS: All right, let's see, we've got -- I think we have the technology. Here we go. There we go.
HANEY: Right. In this incident, when I looked at that site, the victim was pumping gas.
HARRIS: This was at the Sunoco station, correct?
HANEY: Yes, the Sunoco station down in Manassas, and he was pumping gas -- oh, let me see how I'll give you next event (ph) -- right here at the center island.
HARRIS: Gotcha.
HANEY: This spot where I'm going to highlight next with an "x" is a Petsmart store, I believe it was. And around the back of it is a small alleyway. OK. This is the longest shot that he's taken and hit someone. He fired from the back side of that Petsmart from that alleyway across a major roadway.
The significant thing was that he had some elevation, so that the vehicles on the roadway did not impede his shot.
HARRIS: Oh, OK. HANEY: And also significant is that that's a darkened area back there, and he shot at night. It was around 8:00 in the evening. And that little roadway allowed him to pull around the side unobserved from the back of that building, where no one else was parked, and then he had a multitude of areas to swing back out.
HARRIS: And again, coming out in the back way, would he have escaped that way, if that is the way he went?
HANEY: Yes.
HARRIS: No red lights back that way?
HANEY: No, none whatsoever. And it's significant, too, also that in a number of incidents when he's near an interstate, he's always one major intersection away from the interstate. Immediately, you're going to clamp those down, because it makes sense. Those are the high-speed avenues to get out of there. And you say interstate or this major road, the second intersection. But if he doesn't take those immediately, if all he's doing, as we said, swinging back out, going away, staying on the small surface roads, staying in the city streets and the county roads, he can get several minutes away from that area unimpeded.
HARRIS: All right, before the clamp-down comes.
HANEY: Yes.
HARRIS: Let's go to the next one then. The next one we have here is the shooting that happened in Bowie, Maryland, the school...
HANEY: Yes, oh, yes.
HARRIS: ... in which that young boy was shot. Let's take a look at that one. I'm very curious about this one, because they still not only -- I believe they've pinpointed where they believe the shot came from in this particular case.
HANEY: Yes, I went to that one specifically, because that one is so bothersome, and took a look at that one.
Let's see if we can put the x's and o's in here. The boy was shot right here at the entrance to his school.
HARRIS: And that's the front of the school.
HANEY: Yes, he was about 20 feet from turning right and walking in the front door. The shot was fired from right there, 75 meters away right in the edge of the woodland. He had a couple of large trees for cover, and there was a downed tree that had fallen that would have also covered him well.
HARRIS: Elevation in this case?
HANEY: Almost flat, but he was shooting across a little open yard area, but quite close, it's 75 meter when I paced it off. Back behind it here is a small tennis park, and then just slightly behind that where it's wooded is a car park area.
HARRIS: I see next to the baseball diamonds.
HANEY: Yes, indeed.
(CROSSTALK)
HANEY: Now, you couldn't even see the baseball diamonds. They're a little further back and the woods screen those. But once he fired that shot, all he did was walk through the park back here to where the vehicle was parked.
HARRIS: How far a walk is that? How quickly do you think someone could traverse that?
HANEY: That was the longest place he's ever moved that I can detect, and it's about 100 meters. So, how long does it take you to walk that? You can run if you're a good athlete in 10 seconds; if you calmly walk it, 30 seconds.
HARRIS: Yes, exactly.
HANEY: Or he...
(CROSSTALK)
HARRIS: A good 15, 20 seconds, he could run that probably.
(CROSSTALK)
HANEY: Right. So, less than a minute, and he's back in his vehicle. And if that...
HARRIS: Now, how did you get out from there once you get to the vehicle, though?
HANEY: Well, again, this is a suburban sort of area. There are small homes, there are small apartment buildings, and you can see up here into the right side, there's, you know, the housing tracts. But if you come out of that, the first supposition is you run to the interstate. That's (UNINTELLIGIBLE) clamp down.
But should you go the other direction, and in most cases I've found he's making right-hand turns, so he's never stopped by oncoming traffic. Had he gone in this direction, he's away from traffic lights...
(CROSSTALK)
HARRIS: What's back up behind all of this? Unfortunately, we can't get the map to show us what's back there.
HANEY: No, we can't.
HARRIS: But if he did come out that way and make nothing but right-hand turns and avoid this clover leaf, what is back there?
HANEY: It's just more of the same. It's more of the county. It's more of that area, and it's suburban, just like any suburban area in the United States. It all looks the same.
Now, I found interesting yesterday morning, one of the ladies who drove into the scene of the shooting and was speaking with a reporter on-site said, I ran into a number of police roadblocks at the major intersections, but I know this neighborhood, and I just came through the city streets and worked my way until I drove right up into position.
HARRIS: Which again gets back to something you've been saying all along. We're talking about someone who knows these areas very well, and perhaps someone who knows them as well as a deliveryman may know them.
HANEY: Well, obviously so. He can't know every place intuitively and utterly familiar -- with utter familiarity, but he goes to that location and he makes a thorough reconnaissance, he drives the routes, he picks the spots to shoot from. And I'm convinced he is timing himself from the time the shot is taken until he's in a vehicle, if he's been outside of the vehicle, until he can drive away to a point where he thinks, I'm outside of the immediate cordon that the police can slam down on me.
HARRIS: Eric Haney, thanks for the primer.
HANEY: OK.
HARRIS: It's rather sobering, but we need to know that nonetheless.
HANEY: OK.
HARRIS: Thanks very much -- appreciate it.
HANEY: Certainly.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
