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Obama: Lack of Gun Control Laws "Frustrating"; Police: Gunman was "Drifter" from Alabama; DOJ May Investigate Hillary's Private Account; Louisiana Theater Shooting. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired July 24, 2015 - 09:00   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.

[09:00:22] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We do begin with breaking news.

Tragic news. We have learned new details in just the past few minutes about that shooting rampage inside a Louisiana movie theater last night. Police have now identified the gunman who killed two women and wounded nine other people.

Here's Lafayette police chief, Jim Craft.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF JIM CRAFT, LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA POLICE: Our shooter is John Russel Houser. H-O-U-S-E-R. He's a white male, 59 years of age. He previously resided in the state of Alabama. He's kind of a drifter. He's been in Lafayette since early July as far as we can tell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We have also learned more about the victims.

CNN's Ed Lavandera joins us live now from Lafayette with that side of the story.

Good morning.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well, the disturbing details in this latest briefing from authorities here in Lafayette as they describe as you heard the name of the gunman, John Russel Houser, 59-year-old, described him as a drifter from Alabama. But they also say they found at a nearby motel that he had arrived here in the Lafayette area less than a month ago, in early July, and they found wigs and disguises in his hotel room.

Investigators here in Lafayette have been working throughout the night, fanned out across the city here, not only working at the theater in processing the crime scene here, but also going to that motel and speaking -- and looking through the room and speaking to the people who were in that area to try to piece together a motive in all of this. But authorities do say that they believe that John Russel Houser came

here with the intention of trying to get away alive, but it was two officers that busted into the theater there and right as they did that, they say that Houser turned the gun on himself. But authorities here believe that Houser was -- intended to try to escape from the theater alive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRAFT: We found wigs and glasses and disguises basically in his room. His vehicle had a switched license tag on it. It was parked right outside an exit door of the theater. It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping. What happened is that the quick law enforcement response forced him back into the theater, at which time he shot himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And now I want to talk about the victims in this case. Two women were killed in the shootout there, Macy Breaux, 21 years old, and 33-year-old Jillian Johnson. Nine other people were wounded. One of those victims is still in critical condition. And, Carol, two others have already been released -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Just so sad. Supposedly authorities said they searched a nearby hotel. What can you tell us about that part of the investigation, Ed?

LAVANDERA: Well, they've been there since about 4:30 this morning. And that is -- it's believed that's where the gunman Houser has been living here in the Lafayette area since early July we were told. Remember, he's been described as a drifter. So obviously they're trying to piece together just exactly all the different places that he's been or where -- how he's been moving around. That is obviously something they are looking at.

But they've been there at that motel and that's where they found the wigs and the disguises and obviously trying to talk to anybody who might have been in contact with him over the last few weeks since he's been here in the Lafayette area.

COSTELLO: All right. Ed Lavandera, reporting live from Lafayette, Louisiana. We'll get back to you. Thank you so much.

Emerging from the horrors of the theater attack, tales of heroism, one involving two school teachers enjoying their last days of summer break. Listen to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL (R), LOUISIANA: Out of tonight's tragedy you're beginning to hear stories of heroism and self-sacrifice. A couple of teachers in the movie together, one of the teachers literally jumped on top of the other, and may have saved her life. And literally, you know, took a bullet that could have hit the second teach in the head. The second teacher was injured, was shot, but not life threatening. She was one of the ones being discharged tonight.

Despite being injured the second teacher was able to pull the fire alarm and help to save other lives. When you think about it, two friends together, one jumps in the way of the bullet to save her friend's life. The other one, even though she's shot, pulls the fire alarm, saves other people's lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Just unbelievable. For more I want to bring in Joey Durel. He's the parish president in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Welcome, sir, thank you so much for being with me this morning.

JOEY DUREL, LAFAYETTE CITY-PARISH PRESIDENT: Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: First of all these teachers, how incredible is that?

[09:05:05] DUREL: I'm sorry, the what?

COSTELLO: The teachers who pulled the fire alarm.

DUREL: Yes. Yes. Well, you know, it's amazing how heroic people can be in such extreme circumstances. And obviously, they just show what human nature is all about.

COSTELLO: Have you been able to talk to any of the victims thus far?

DUREL: No, actually, I just landed here in Lafayette about 5:30 this morning. (INAUDIBLE) sent an airplane for me in Chattanooga where we were staying in North Carolina. So I'm just getting back and have not had a chance to even get my feet wet yet.

COSTELLO: So you were in Chattanooga, the scene of a terrible shooting and you go home in an emergency situation to deal with a terrible shooting in your own city.

DUREL: Right, yes, this is -- where I was staying, we're actually staying in North Carolina where they had no cell service and very little Wi-Fi, and so we had my family. Yesterday we took our older grandchildren to the Smokey Mountains. Came back, my son had stayed at the cabin and he came out immediately and said, have you heard what's going on in Lafayette. So it was the first news I heard of it and I had no cell service. So I went to the emergency services center out in the middle of the forest and got communication and arranged for a flight from (INAUDIBLE) to come and pick me up.

COSTELLO: You know, although we should be used to hearing about tragedies like this, somehow they always surprise us. Did this one surprise you?

DUREL: Of course. You know, as the governor said, this is any place USA. And I think the message -- we're hosting the Louisiana Municipal Association next week. So we have all the cities in Louisiana coming in to Lafayette with all the elected officials. And my message to them and my message to the mayors all around the country, this clearly can happen to anybody. This wasn't somebody from Lafayette. It was, as you heard, a drifter. Someone who -- we don't even know why he randomly maybe potentially picked Lafayette. Came here a couple of weeks ago and commenced this horrible, horrible act of amazing tragedy.

And, you know, we're -- you can't explain it. There's no human ability to explain how somebody does something like this. But we'll continue to piece this together. The police departments are doing a great job. All of the agencies are working well together. My role in this is really -- is to work with the victims and with this community. You know, we're the happiest city in America according to Harvard. And we will be the happiest city again.

We're hurting right now, our hearts are broken, because the people that got hurt here are our families, are our friends, and we're going to work with them and our community will come together strong for all their families.

COSTELLO: All right. I just want to put a picture up of one of the victims. We just got a hole of a picture. This is 33-year-old Jillian Johnson. She was in that movie theater and we believe she was sitting right in front of the gunman when she was shot. She's one of two people killed inside that theater. A third remains in the -- well, actually nine others were injured, one of them critically. And of course -- some of them remain in the hospital this morning.

Can you give us an update about the injured? Do you know anything more about them?

DUREL: I know two have been released. I think there's one that still has -- they are all obviously serious, but one that is, as I understand, still has maybe life-threatening injuries. But that's about all I have heard myself.

COSTELLO: All right. Joey Durel, the parish president for Lafayette, Louisiana. Thank you so much for being with me this morning. I know you have a busy day ahead. Thanks you so much.

We'll have much more on the horror at that Louisiana movie theater throughout the hour. Up next, I'll talk to a man whose daughter was in the same row as the gunman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were buying popcorn at the concession stand when a whole group of people, teenagers mainly, running out telling everybody to run for their life. And I have to secede what the teenager just claimed like a little prank you know, and then I see a whole another bigger group coming out, screaming the same thing. And our reaction was, then we saw a lady with blood all over her leg. I just grabbed my child and we just all ran.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[09:13:12] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I could have been shot. Like I didn't know where the shooter was. I don't know where he could have been. I don't know if you could have gone into. Our theater and shoot us. And I was just so afraid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: President Obama is on his way to Nairobi, Kenya right now addressing security issues across the region. But once again he's faced with security issues here at home. The president has been briefed on last night's deadly shooting and in a cruel twist the tragedy just comes hours after he called a lack of commonsense gun laws that, quote, "most frustrating part of his presidency."

Michelle Kosinski live in Kenya with more for us.

Hi, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Right. You know, Kenyans were kind of upset over the last couple days with the world talking about potential security concerns of the president traveling here. Well, now people here are marveling that what the president is being briefed on right now is the security concerns of regular people in public places in America.

I mean, you look at over the last couple of years that shootings have happened in malls, theaters, kindergarten schools, you name it. It is a problem. And what to do about that problem is the debate right now.

President Obama expressed his frustration over trying to do more to prevent these things in an interview with the BBC last night. And interestingly as you mentioned this happened only hours before a shooting happened yet again. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The one area I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient commonsense gun safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings.

[09:15:01] And if you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: So, in that interview, he also said that he wasn't going to be stopped from trying to do more. So that would have to be in the form of an executive order. How far that would go remains to be scene.

The White House hasn't been giving much in the way of detail on what they want to do on this issue and when it could happen. When you look at 2013, for example, after the Newtown shooting at the school, in Sandy Hook, the president enacted nearly two dozen executive orders on gun control but they were fairly weak. I mean, they did things like try to share information among agencies, put limits on background checks.

But a lot of these were stymied by legislation. That kind of had them going nowhere. When you look at Congress's attempts to limit the president, it's pretty tough.

Most recently, they put in a rider to an appropriations bill for the Department of Justice that would limit the president's attempts to try to stop ammunition from being sold in certain quantities. Things like that.

I think most interestingly, one thing the president tried to do in his last round of executive orders was to allow the CDC to do studies on gun violence, just studies. But the CDC hasn't wanted to do that out of fears that if they studied gun violence in America, that Congress would try to cut certain funding.

So, that's the kind of impasse that the president faces and to say that this would be an uphill battle to try to change things, Carol, is putting it very, very lightly.

COSTELLO: Well, it's a sad world when you can't even do a study without fear of repercussion. That's ridiculous.

Michelle Kosinski, I know you can't comment. I'm sorry to lay that on you. But I just had to say it.

Michelle Kosinski reporting live from Kenya this morning. I appreciate it.

All right. We just got cell phone video in from inside the theater. This was taken by somebody who went to the movie last night in Lafayette. You can see that they are attending to an injured person on the ground.

I'm seeing this for the first time along with you. They are trying to carry that person to get some sort of help. You can hear the emergency vehicles arriving in the background. We assume they are hearing that person to a vehicle that might be able to take them to the hospital.

Nine people originally taken to the hospital, one of them in critical condition. The parish president just told me that two of those injured have been released from the hospital. That's good news. But everybody says the psychological scars will live on forever.

Later this hour, we're going to check in with the Lafayette Police Chief Jim Kraft. He'll tell us more about the shooter, this 59-year- old drifter, that just opened fire for no apparent reason in this movie theater.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[09:22:21] JIM CRAFT, LAFAYETTE POLICE CHIEF: Our victims are: Mayci Breaux, a white female, 21 years of age. She died on scene. Jillian Johnson, a white female, 33 years of age, died at the hospital.

Of the nine victims that were hospitalized, two have been released, one victim remains in critical condition.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We're following breaking news out of Lafayette, Louisiana. Police have identified the gunman who opened fire last night killing two young women and injuring nine other people.

They say -- this is the man, 59-year-old John Russell Houser. Police describe him as a drifter and say he just came to Lafayette from Alabama earlier this month. They think he planned to flee the theater but saw police and went back inside and shot himself to death. We'll have much more on this.

But, first, you want to bring in Randall Mann. He's the VP of marketing for Akadian Ambulance. He responded to the scene. Also, his 21-year-old daughter was inside the theater in the same row as the shooter.

Randall joins me now on the phone.

Good morning, sir.

RANDALL MANN, VP OF MARKETING, ACADIAN AMBULANCE (via telephone): Good morning.

COSTELLO: First of all, how is your daughter?

MANN: She's doing well. I appreciate. Obviously, very traumatized.

She made a comment this morning that she was just thankful that the shooter did not pick one of the theaters that had a children's movie. I take that as a great first step and good sign for her eventually coping with this.

COSTELLO: Yes, because I think the theater next to where the shooting happened "Minions" playing. So, there were lots of kids and they had to run out and their parents are having to have a hard conversation with all of them this morning.

Sir, you responded to the scene. Did you know your daughter was inside?

MANN: Yes, I learned about it from my daughter. She and her friend were attending the movie. I live literally a half mile from the theater. When they got out, they immediately drove to my house and they burst in telling me the story. So I grabbed my keys and was getting to my car. That's when I started hearing sirens. It was that early in the process. I got to the theater where there

were just a few police cars at the time. We had a couple ambulances on the scene already and I just kind of helped coordinate some of that.

COSTELLO: How did your daughter tell you this went down?

MANN: She said that, as you mentioned earlier, she was sitting in the same row as this shooter, on the opposite end of the row. They were second from the top row of the theater.

[09:25:04] And that they heard a couple pops. Weren't sure what it was. Firecrackers was a part of the movie.

And then they started to notice muzzle flashes. That's when they knew something was happening. She immediately hit the floor and so didn't see a whole lot more after that. She and her friend made their way out, and they did comment people were panicked to get out but were helping each other.

It was not a mob scene, but people just getting out as quickly as they could to get away from the shooter.

COSTELLO: It's hard to know how one would react in a situation like that. I think he fired that gun 13 times.

The fact --

MANN: That's what I'm hearing as well. We're just so fortunate. I was here early on and saw the police arriving, multiple agencies. Our team, everybody responded so well the. The theater patrons were traumatized and fairly calm and cooperative and it's a shame it had to happen. It's fortunate to have the first responders and the medics to be able to handle something like when it does happen.

For me, it's strange. You know, as you mentioned -- , I'm dealing with a professional level but then these things all the time whether it's a mass casualty incident but you never think of how close to home it could have gotten.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. And just I'd like to get your final thoughts on the shooter, because -- not that any shooting make sense -- but it was a 59-year-old guy. He was seeing the movie "Trainwreck", which is not the normal movie a 59-year-old guy sees. He was a drifter. He had certain disguises in his hotel room. He came from Alabama.

It's just so strange.

MANN: It is. The thing that stuck out to me and I saw this movie last week. It's a funny movie.

I'm think, so he sat there for 20-sometihng minutes, and a very funny movie. Obviously the audience was laughing, maybe that made him angry. But why did he pick that movie? You know, it's strange he would choose a comedy to do that. He doesn't fit the profile of what you'd think and don't that think happening in Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun County.

COSTELLO: All right. Randall Mann, thank you so much, and I'm glad your daughter is OK this morning. Well, as OK as she can be. I appreciate your being with me.

(MUSIC)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

The Justice Department is being asked to investigate whether sensitive information was mishandled while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Specifically, the DOJ is being asked to look at the private e- mail account Clinton used.

Elise Labott joins me now live with more on this.

Good morning.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Well, this originated in a story in "The New York Times" which reported that the request was made for a criminal inquiry into Secretary Clinton's handling of possible classified material with that private e-mail server as secretary of state. Now, "The Times" is saying that the Justice Department was asked to investigate whether sensitive information was handled. That's what our sources tell us.

The inspector general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies have asked the Justice Department to see if the handling of the e-mails was improper because it seems as if perhaps the State Department did not classify certain information and Secretary Clinton might have inadvertently used that. It might be the suggestion now.

Now, Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Secretary Clinton said in a statement, quote, "Contrary to the initial story that has already been significantly revised, Clinton followed appropriately practices in dealing with classified materials."

Now, we remember Clinton exclusively used that private e-mail server saying that was easier for her. Those revelations have dogged her presidential campaign. She did turn over 50,000 pages of e-mails to the State Department, asked for them to be made public. The State is reviewing them to make sure no sensitive information is released.

They have released about 4,000 pages so far. But it's important to note that at least one of the e-mails in question was deemed classified after Clinton's use of the private account became known. And now, the inspector general is saying perhaps hundreds of these e- mails might have contained information that was not properly classified at the time, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Elise Labott, I'm sure you'll continue to follow this story. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Coming up next in the NEWSROOM: I sit down with an exclusive interview with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. I asked about his trip to the Vatican, on climate change, but I had had to ask him about Donald Trump. Let's just say I don't think Mayor de Blasio will be giving him his cell phone number any time soon.