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Dramatic and Deadly Ending To Hostage Siege in Australia; Continuing Coverage Of Philadelphia Shooting Spree

Aired December 15, 2014 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, here we go. Here's our second hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

More on that breaking news out of Sydney, Australia. We're getting new information here, this dramatic and deadly ending to this hostage siege that lasted some 17 hours. The standoff ended with an eruption of gunfire in downtown Sydney.

After these scenes, the siege ended in a matter of moments. All 17 hostages were accounted for. The gunman was shot and killed and, now we can tell you this afternoon two hostages have died.

A handful of hostages had run out of this cafe to safety moments before the police moved in here. Several others managed to escape hours earlier. Let me go back. This whole thing started right around 6:00, 6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time last evening. A man entered the shop carrying a bag with a gun and a customer then called police.

The gunman has now been identified a Man Haron Monis, self-styled Muslim cleric born in Iran.

Here's a look at how the siege unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like four or five hostages have managed to either escape or be removed from the Lindt cafe, where they were being held hostages.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More pictures now coming through. It looks like there is more activity going on. Let's find out what's happening now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look, you can probably hear the loud explosions behind me. I don't know if it's gunfire. I don't know if it's some sort of small explosive device. That is certainly gunfire.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The police are throwing something.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are. They are throwing something into the doorway. And we just seen another hostage brought out. A woman has been brought out. (CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that may well be a stun grenade in this situation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can see a woman there from these live pictures from Martin Place being carried out by officers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can just see now -- I don't know whether you can see on this live shot a whole bunch of paramedics are running up Martin Place. So they are entering from Elizabeth Street and they are running up Martin Place towards the Lindt cafe. I counted at least four stretchers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we can see that on the live shot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ambulances are racing through past us now bringing patients out. We had an ambulance driver just ask some camera people to move out of the way because they had a patient that they needed to bring out.

They then turned around and sped out. I saw multiple ambulances coming out, racing out of the scene just a moment ago and shortly after about three police cars racing towards the city, towards the center of the scene. I can smell the gunfire in the air. It's really quite an incredible scene.

The city is still deathly silent apart from the sirens and the occasional -- from where I am -- and the occasional volley of munitions, of gunfire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, those were some of the scenes that played out in the overnight hours.

We have Kathy Novak. She is back with us with World News Australia.

And 7:00 in the morning your time there in Sydney, Kathy, and my goodness, people waking up to this horror. Can you tell me -- tell me what we know about the 17 hostages.

KATHY NOVAK, SBS WORLD NEWS AUSTRALIA: Well, it had been unclear for much of the day yesterday exactly how many people had been inside this cafe.

We had various reports starting from about dozen right up to 50. Now we have this confirmation as you say that there were 17 people inside. Five of them managed to escape early on in the afternoon of yesterday. The rest were left inside there and it wasn't until those dramatic scenes overnight here about 2:00 a.m. local time that we saw another handful of people managing to escape.

And it was after that that we saw this escalated response on the part of police, them storming the cafe, gunshots ringing out throughout the city. We could hear them a block away where we were standing. And now we know, of course, that two people died as a result of that police action and also the gunman, the two hostages that died, a man and a woman both in their 30s, four others injured, including a police officer.

We understand that the people who have been injured, their injuries are not life-threatening, but they are being treated in hospital. Police, of course, wanting to speak to all of them to find out a bit more about what happened, but their first priority is their welfare, both their psychological health, as well as, of course, their physical health.

BALDWIN: I wanted to ask about the hostages, those who are innocent first, but then this gunman. We know, Kathy, he is no stranger to police. He's been charged with sex abuse. He's been linked by police to his ex-wife's murder. What more do we know about him? Why was he not behind bars?

NOVAK: That's a great question.

This man was out on bail. He had been convicted of sending offensive letters to the families of soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan, served community service for those charges, but after that was also charged, as you say, with a string of violent offenses.

He was charged with being accessory to the murder of his ex-wife and also a number of sexual assault charges. This man is a self-styled cleric, though Muslim groups here say they have no affiliation with him, he acts alone. But he had been claiming he had the powers of spiritual healing and black magic and advertised as much.

It was from those claims that these reports and the charges of sexual assaults emerged. He faced those charges, but was out on bail and this is then where he ended up, as we know, in this cafe holding these innocent people hostage. Many questions will continue to be asked about why that was allowed to happen, but what the police are stressing today is that although those lives were lost, the police commissioner is saying police saved lives, that if they didn't move in exactly when they did, that more lives would have been lost.

And he's commending the actions of the officers and all the teams involved in this siege.

BALDWIN: The question why, perhaps we will have the answer soon enough. I have to imagine law enforcement going through his home, his computer, his phone, et cetera, to try to find the motivation there.

Kathy Novak live in Sydney, thank you, Kathy.

And with this gunman inside of the cafe, police outside had few options, as the police commissioner said. There will be a lot of second-guessing here. But the men and women at the scene had to make split-second decisions.

Let's talk about that with Dan Bongino, former Secret Service agent.

Dan, nice to see you again. Welcome. DAN BONGINO, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: So, question number one -- and I asked this of a hostage negotiator last hour. And I would love to hear your response. When you see pictures of this guy behind that glass at that chocolate coffee shop and you have a clear shot, presumably snipers outside, here he was. Why not take him out?

BONGINO: Well, in the Secret Service, we had a very advanced countersniper division. And what they tell you is the first thing they look for is open, not closed windows.

Even a thin piece of glass can deflect a bullet significantly enough, especially from a distance, so that you miss the target. Now you have a situation where the target knows you engaged him, he knows he's been shot at him, and you missed, which geometrically grows the danger of the situation. And that's probably why.

BALDWIN: So, we know according to this news conference, New South Wales, they were saying that they heard the gunfire, they then rushed in. It looked like they were using some flash bangs. What's going through your head as you're going into a situation? You have no idea what you're getting into. Do you kill? Do you capture? What about the hostages?

BONGINO: Well, Brooke, we have seen a drastic change in tactics in two specific arenas over the last two decades in terms of law enforcement, school shootings and terrorist attacks, hostage situations like this, where in the past it was more of a secure the scene, negotiate, see what the motivation was, minimize the loss.

Since Columbine and since the advent of sole proprietor terrorism or lone wolf, what some people call it, what you have seen is a focus on law enforcement in just simply minimizing the losses now and stopping whatever is happening, happening as soon as you have tactical knowledge of what is going on.

So, what was going through their head when they heard gunshots is probably we need to get in there, even if sadly we lose a hostage.

BALDWIN: Before the gunshots, we know there was some kind of communication from this, we will call him this alleged lone wolf, this gunman and he had two demands.

He wanted the black ISIS flag and he wanted a phone call with Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister. How high up the chain do you think those demands got? How do you communicate with someone who is asking for these things?

BONGINO: I think it went high up the chain as the prime minister himself. I don't think it was ever considered that he was actually going to talk to...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: You don't? BONGINO: No, I don't think so.

I think when you start acquiescing to demands like that -- I think it says clearly that there was no escape plan intended by this individual, that this was going to be a suicide mission.

Again, he never asked for any kind of transportation, from what we know, at least of what knowledge I have now. There were no demands for prisoner releases, anything like that. It seems to me this was a suicide mission from the start, which probably added to the gravity of the situation on the law enforcement front and compressed the timeline significantly.

BALDWIN: As I was watching all this unfold, Dan, I kept thinking what if this was happening in Dupont Circle or what if this was happening in some coffee shop in Times Square? Do you think we would have seen a similar response tactically whether it was D.C. or New York?

BONGINO: Brooke, I'm so glad you brought that up, because one of the topics we really need to start addressing in the United States and taking very seriously, we have made some moves, but we haven't really firmed up a solid plan, is the soft targets.

The Nairobi mall in Kenya, this is the new terrorist tactic, go out there, grab a potentially psychologically disturbed individual, recruit him, do online videos, get him to attack a shopping mall at Christmas. There is a very long -- the opportunity cost for terrorist groups is nil.

They don't have any investment in this person whatsoever. It cost a half-a-million dollars to pull off 9/11. It costs nothing for something like this. This is where the private business community and law enforcement really need to take their security very seriously. No reason to panic, but you bring up a very good valid point, that that idea hasn't escaped other people with more malicious intent.

BALDWIN: I think of lone wolves, I think of the Tsarnaevs, I think of Boston and we know what happened there.

Dan Bongino, thank you so much for jumping on with me today.

People are writing books about lone wolves. This is a huge, huge issue. Just ahead, though, how the gunman used social media to his advantage and how he negotiated through his hostages.

Plus, happening now another violent situation, this one right here in the United States. There is a man on the run after police say he went on a shooting spree targeting members of his own family. That's unfolding now. Susan Candiotti with the latest details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Got some other breaking news I want to get here out of Philadelphia -- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, generally the area where police are trying to close in on a suspect who is still on the run. Six people have been shot and killed across three separate

communities, and police say this is all stemming from what they are calling a domestic dispute.

Susan Candiotti is back with us for a little bit more on where this person is, who this person is.

And he had kids with him?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: He -- well, apparently at one point, he had children with him.

We're hearing at least six people that -- as you said, plus another person seriously injured among three locations. That's where authorities say those shootings took place. But now they are at a fourth location where the suspect might be. He's being identified as Bradley William Stone. And he is 35 years old.

We do have a picture of him right there.

BALDWIN: Here he is.

CANDIOTTI: Exactly. He's the suspect in this case. He's described at 5'10, 195 pounds. You can see what he looks like. Authorities are also telling us that he's known to use a cane or a walker to assist him, but hard to imagine how that might be playing as how he may be getting from place to place. We just don't know right now.

(CROSSTALK)

CANDIOTTI: But they also say he might be wearing military fatigues or -- that might be sandy or green in color.

How did it all come about? It started in the middle of the night, apparently. And people started reporting shots being fired and then they started going to these different locations, one after the other after the other.

BALDWIN: We have that sound.

CANDIOTTI: OK. Let's listen to what one witness said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I heard three or four gunshots and I heard the kids yelling, saying, mommy, no, no, mommy, no. He just said, let's go. We got to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: What we understand is that this woman said that she saw the suspect or a suspect, a man, come out of the house, and that he had two children with him and that they were wearing pajamas.

BALDWIN: Oh. CANDIOTTI: She said, can I help you? And that's when -- you heard the rest. She just heard the children say no, no, mommy, no. So, it went from there.

Again, authorities are saying this appears to be domestic-related and that...

BALDWIN: Are they more specific than that?

CANDIOTTI: Well, at least one of the victims is identified as his ex- wife, according to a law enforcement source that we know familiar with the investigation. And then the others are said to be relatives of his.

You mentioned that earlier. But, of course, a motive beyond domestic, we don't know. We do have some information about his background that we're still checking out. We want to confirm it before we go public with it.

BALDWIN: OK. OK. We will let you do that. Susan Candiotti, thank you so much. Keep us posted on what's happening there in the Philadelphia area.

Coming up next, we will take you back to our other breaking story here, more on the suspect in the Australian hostage siege and his history of violence. Hear what happened in those final moments in that cafe.

Plus, we're hearing the hostage taker actually encouraged the hostages to use their phones, to use social media, to tweet about what was happening. Why? What would he have been planning? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Once again back to our breaking news.

If you're just joining us, two hostages are dead after this dramatic standoff inside of a coffee shop in Sydney. The hostage taker is dead. He was a self-proclaimed Muslim cleric and according to law enforcement, this was an isolated incident, not part of a larger plot or even a terrorist organization.

Let me go to Washington to my colleague Tom Foreman, who is there to show us the hostage holder used social media to get his message out. How?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, not only that, Brooke, but to give the impression that this was more than just one person at work, that this was something bigger than himself.

One of the key ways he did this was through four videos that he apparently forced his hostages to record and then post online, so they could be seen by the outside world. They grew ever more urgent as they repeated his demands and they were all fairly short. But look at the last one; the last one here, if we can bring it up, they said: "This is all he wants. It's not hard. Why are we still here? Why have we been let down by Tony Abbott, the prime minister, yet again? Please help us. It's simple. He wants an ISIS flag and he wants Tony Abbott to ring him and speak to him on live media. Pretty straightforward. What else can we do? I'm begging."

Obviously, one of the reasons for that, Brooke, is to create the sense of public anxiety. One of the problems for a hostage taker when you can't see the hostage and when the police shut that off from the outside world, as they would like to do, is it takes away the anxiety for the public to a degree because they can't see it.

It looks as if this guy was trying to get his hostages to help him keep the anxiety ramped up outside. It was in military terms a false multiplier for him to bring social media into the equation -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: It's definitely something different to see, taking advantage of social media, just as, Tom Foreman, as we know, ISIS certainly has with its own form of propaganda.

Tom Foreman, thank you so much. We will look for more of your reporting through the evening here on CNN.

Up next here, hear the way that Australia tries to actually crack down on homegrown terrorists, pretty unique, as more travel -- or are traveling overseas to join this group, to joining these terrorists there, ISIS.

Plus, we will speak with one Australian journalist whose colleague was on the ground during the raid. Hear what she said, hear what she heard moments before the takedown.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Breaking news here on CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Here's what we know. Today's hostage standoff shocked a lot of Australians and for a time put a normally busy section of the city on lockdown, and government buildings, including the iconic Sydney Opera House, evacuated or closed.

The gunman identified as Man Haron Monis was shot and killed. Also, we know two hostages, a man and woman, both in their 30s, have also died.

Four other hostages were wounded. Here's a look back at what happened from start to finish.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The siege began about 9:40 a.m., when from behind a glass door a lone figure emerged wearing a black bandanna across his forehead a gun slung over his left shoulder, pacing the store he had just laid siege to.

MIKE BAIRD, NEW SOUTH WALES PREMIER: We're being tested today in Sydney. But whatever the test, we will face it head on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two of more than a dozen hostages were forced to raise the black Sunni extremist flag of their terrorist captors.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society. Nothing should ever change that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our number one aim is to resolve this incident peacefully.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have just been told two more people have just run out. We had three escape about an hour-and-a-half ago. We have just heard that two more people have now come out. So that means five.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many people do you think were inside at the time that this was happening?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's hard to say. But judging by the roster that I have and like the number of tables I saw that were occupied, probably about 20 or so.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The gunman or The alleged offender opened the bag UP and revealed the gun to get rid of her. And she went running the stairs. She said gun, gun, gun, gun in the blue bag.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're dealing with a lunatic. They're dealing with a person who is making outrageous claims. He wants the government to acknowledge this is a terrorist operation, that he's doing this on behalf of ISIS or ISIL.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A gentleman called Man Haron Monis, who is an Iranian cleric who is currently out on bail for a string of violent sexual assault offenses.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can probably hear the loud explosions behind me. I don't know if it's gunfire. I don't know if it's some sort of small explosive device. That's certainly gunfire.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can see a woman there from these live pictures from Martin Place being carried out by officers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can just see now -- I don't know whether you can see on this live shot a whole bunch of paramedics are running up Martin Place.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ambulances are racing through past us now bringing patients out. We had an ambulance driver just ask some camera people to move out of the way because they had a patient that they needed to bring out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was really, really very sad. And we were all sort of waiting, everyone, the authorities, police, and ambulance and fire -- indeed were all waiting for this siege to end. They have to end eventually.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: Sixteen or so hours, this whole thing went on.

And keep in mind, just this past September, the Australian government raised its national terror public alert from medium to high because they were responding to the growing flight of Australians to either Iraq or Syria.

The Australian domestic intelligence service estimates about 250 Australian citizens have gone to join jihadist groups.