Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Coverage of Shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired October 01, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm hoping the fact they are calling this a gun-free zone doesn't mean police aren't armed either. Or the security they might use in the school. So that's an important part. It's very important here. Gun had-free zone means nothing to a shooter.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Fact is the word neutralized. Why wouldn't police just say he's dead?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. Maybe the fact that maybe, you know, he's afraid he's part of a conspiracy and other people. So that's probably the main reason why. And they want to know if there's other people who might be involved still thinking he's alive, you know. Is he giving up information on me? Do we see on the kind of strange movement going on from other people he's connected to? So that's probably the reason.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Especially if, you know, he was on social media and if he was having conversations with people. They have to keep the information as tight as they possibly can because they don't know whether there's a second person or this was part of a conspiracy, whether it was an organized conspiracy, whether it was an organized conspiracy, whether it is an ad hoc conspiracy, but all of that are things they are looking at right now. They just want to make sure that they contain this and make sure that this doesn't trigger any of those horrible copycat incidents that we tend to see.

BALDWIN: Standby for me. I still have Jonathan Gilliam on the line, former Navy Seal, former FBI special agent.

Jonathan, before I talk to you I was just handed this. This is from the Douglas County sheriff's office. It sounds like this is part of a transcript to back and forth between officers here. So I'm just going to read it for you. We're exchanging shots with him. He's in a classroom. It's got to be the southeast side of snider hall. The other dispatcher says, copy. Exchanging gunshots right now with a male. He's in a classroom on the southeast side of snider hall. I don't know if snider hall is the science building that everyone referencing.

But Jonathan, to hear that, exchanging gunshots with a male, we know he was in multiple classrooms. Does that tell you anything?

JONATHAN GILLIAM, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT (on the phone): Well, first thing it tells me is when you were talking about social media a few minutes ago, you have to take what you're hearing on social media with a grain of salt. Because law enforcement do not carry suppressed weapons. So these students are sending out text messages saying 30 shots and I didn't hear anything. Must be a suppressed weapon. That's how rumors start flowing.

So obviously, there was noise going on. It also -- that sounds to me like they were actually engaged with this individual shooting back and forth. I'm not clear, though, if when they say neutralized, usually that means the individual is dead. Because the threat has been completely eliminated. And sometimes people will see a shooter after they have been killed, they are still handcuffed. That's procedure because, you know, strange things that happen where we think somebody is dead and they are not and they are still a threat. So that could be where other people are saying this person has been taken into custody, where law enforcement is saying he's neutralized. Either way, it sounds like that threat is over and it sounds like they were engaged in a heavy fight with this individual.

BALDWIN: Yes, Jonathan, stay with me. Tom Fuentes, let me bring you in, former assistant director of the FBI. You know, what law - I'm thinking ahead, as far as what enforcement are doing right now, we also know, you know, the feds are involved here as well. The fact that we know canines are there talking about, you know, using them to sniff out explosives and things to that nature, you have to then, what, be thinking about a vehicle this individual would have gotten to the school in? Searching the vehicle, where else will they be looking?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: You would have, Brooke, you know, the possibility of the person could have taken a campus bus to get there or may live close enough to be able to be in walking distance. Obviously, they would want to try to find a vehicle if they could and determine if there's any more contraband, explosives, firearms, ammunition in that vehicle.

They also, as has been mentioned by many, the search of the person's residence if they have him identified, if they have true identifications to try to determine where he lived and to render that place safe because that could be booby trapped. Like the apartment in Aurora, Colorado, after that shooting. So you have that concern as well.

And then our other people involved in this? We heard about them looking on social media, you know. And that's depending if they have a positive identification on this individual. You know, in the Sandy hook elementary shooting, you have the shooter carrying his brother's identification. So even if this person is dead at the scene and if they have identification, can they verify, in fact, that's the same person or the real person? That's a big part of this. Identify the person, are there more people involved? Is there more evidence and dangerous materials out there in the community either in the classrooms or at his residence or a vehicle that could still harm others if they come across that type of thing?

BALDWIN: Tom, thank you so much. I want to go back to Oregon to the Roseburg police department. I have Sergeant Aaron Dunbar on the phone with me.

Sergeant, I'm so sorry for what's happening in your community. Can we just begin with - can we begin with just the numbers? Can you confirm for me the latest number we still had 10 dead, more than 20 wounded, do those numbers still hold for you?

[15:35:24] SGT. AARON DUNBAR, ROSEBURG, OREGON, POLICE (on the phone): We don't have specific numbers at this point. That information is still coming in from the scene. But I suspect that's going to be close.

BALDWIN: Are you on the scene by any chance?

DUNBAR: No, I'm in the sheriff's office communications center.

BALDWIN: You're in communication with folk who is are on the scene. Can you tell me what you know as far as I understand this happened in the science building? Speaking with Douglas County fire official told me they found multiple victims in multiple classrooms. Can you add to that?

DUNBAR: Not a whole lot of information, you know. A little after 10:30, we just got a report of an active shooter at the college. The college is just a short distance outside the city limits. So you had not only the sheriff's office but the Roseburg police department and several other adjoining jurisdictions. And basically, everybody that was working went to the scene. And we still have dozens of officers out there. They are in the process of clearing the entire campus. It's a rural campus, so there's 12 or 15 buildings on the campus. And so, they are having to go room by room, building by building and secure the entire facility.

BALDWIN: Forgive me, do you have any idea when it happened if protocols were put in place, any of these classrooms on lockdown?

DUNBAR: The best information I have is that the entire college went into lockdown pretty quickly. And then the officers responded and were there within three or four minutes of the first call.

BALDWIN: All right, Sergeant Dunbar, thank you so much. Roseburg police department, also hearing that the president of the United States has now officially been briefed on what's happened here in Roseburg, Oregon. And we'll continue monitoring developments as we all are.

Turning to you, Harry Houck, you know again, if you're just joining us, at least 10, this is all very fluid, but at least 10 people have been killed in a school shooting at this Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. At least 20 have been wounded. According to the county commissioner, one of the wounded was a female with a chest wound. Talking to a fire official earlier, he did confirm they transported 11 people. You see -- I'm hearing multiple ambulances rushing to the scene and rushing out to several local hospitals. He told me of the 11 they transported, two died at the hospital. And multiple classrooms involved. Obviously, as we have been saying, multiple victims. Harry Houck, I'm at a loss for words now.

HARRY HOUCK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, it's a terrible incident. I mean, the fact here is that we need to find out, you know, why did this guy commit this attack?

BALDWIN: Right.

HOUCK: Is this a terrorist attack? It's a terrorist attack no matter whether it's being done by Al-Qaeda or somebody else. We have many people dead. They created terror in the city. Why did he do this? Was his intent to, maybe, shoot it out with the police at the end? Did he want to survive this attack? These are questions that we are going to be asking here in the future. By executing that search warrant in his home if we had actually identified who he is. We're going to be able to find out a lot of information.

BALDWIN: Sounds like they have.

HOUCK: Right, exactly. So you know, we're going to find a lot of information about that.

BALDWIN: Like what? What will they be looking at?

HOUCK: Well, we are going to be -- they are going to go into his computer and we go in his computer. We are going to ascertain whether or not he's been looking up ways to commit attacks. Has he been emailing back and forth from other people that might be involved with possible conspiracy, things like that. Did he leave some kind of a note behind in his residence exactly why he committed this attack because if the shooter is in fact dead, which we don't know for sure, is that then we're never going to find out if he doesn't leave anything behind to let us know about it. So it's very important factor right now.

BALDWIN: Sounds like what Deborah Feyerick was reporting. And by the way, I just want to be clear. We don't know what kind of attack. I her you on terrorism in the sense that people are terrified.

HOUCK: Right, exactly.

BALDWIN: But we just don't know.

But Deborah Feyerick, well you know, working her sources the last two hours sitting with me onset, you know, she was hearing from a source familiar with the investigation that this individual had exchange, I don't know if it was social media, texting, you know, indicating something would be happening possibly later in the day.

HOUCK: And how do we pick that up? I mean, with all the transmissions that are going on Facebook and Twitter every day, how are police able to identify this specific transmission and be able to leak it to this attack and be able to stop this attack from happening? That's one of the problems we have here. You know, we always go back and look to see if there's some kind of a sign here that somebody is (INAUDIBLE) an attack, but nobody saw it and nobody spot it. Nobody called the police about it. How many people read it? How many people saw it and thought maybe it was just some guy blowing off some scene or whether or not this was really going to happen. And that's the problem.

[15:40:08] BALDWIN: Tom Fuentes, back to you in Washington. You know, FBI background, thinking at this through, the lens of a law enforcement officer here. We know that have seen five busloads full of students heading to the fairgrounds. What else is happening right now here in Roseburg?

FUENTES: I think, Brooke, as Harry mentioned, you know, there is the key thing. What's motivated this individual? Was it part of the greater group? And the word terrorism, of course, you know, everybody wants to talk about it, but it could be. You know, is it domestic terrorism? Is it part of some white hate group? Is it international terrorism in support of ISIS or, you know, one of the other extremist groups like Al-Qaeda? Or is it just a mentally ill person with gun or guns, you know, as we have seen in many instances.

So, that's what has to be determined here. Of course, terrorism implies a greater conspiracy, more individuals involved either in motivating him or actually involved and this is something that the FBI, the federal agencies, the state police and other police around the country would be worried about is this part of a greater plan, let's say, for multiple individuals to attack college campuses or other soft targets today, tomorrow, you know, in the near future? So there's a lot that goes into do we just have one lone deranged individual that pulled this off or is there more to it.

BALDWIN: Right. No, it's an excellent point. Tom Fuentes, standby.

Lorie Andrews is on the phone with me now. Lorie lives across the street from this community college.

And Lorie, let me express my heartfelt, you know, sorrow for what's happened here in your community. And secondly, I don't know if you are inside your home or outside. Tell me what you're seeing and what you have heard.

LORIE ANDREWS, LIVES ACROSS UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE (on the phone): I'm inside my home now, but at first I thought somebody had leftover fireworks because it happens all the time here. I was out on my deck. Then I started seeing police officers with sirens and lights and they kept coming and kept coming. So I walked up there to look where everybody was and they kept the students that were in snider hall separate for a long time. And then they came out, some of the students told me that they think the shooter was shot, but he is in handcuffs. He's alive. And they thought 18 were dead. And we saw one girl wrapped in a blanket with blood on her and they took her. And I saw seven ambulances leave with lights and sirens and I was told that they weren't going to remove the bodies until the campus was cleared.

BALDWIN: We don't know that yet. And you know, as far as any kind of description, any officials who I have talked to, you know, have sort of stopped short of wanting to describe anything they have seen in the classroom. But you just described, you know, one student wrapped in a blanket and bloodied. As far as the numbers, we just can't fully confirm yet. We're getting preliminary reports.

When you say -- let me go back to your point about hearing fireworks. Did that mean you thought they were fire woks but you heard shots?

ANDREWS: Yes.

BALDWIN: Do you know how many shots?

ANDREWS: No, it lasted about a minute.

BALDWIN: It lasted about a minute. And then nothing?

ANDREWS: Yes. Then I just started seeing sirens and police officers. I mean, even Oakland, the volunteer fire department and people off duty, I have never seen so many assault rifles. Everybody was there.

BALDWIN: Rushing in because they didn't know what had happened, how many shooters there could have been. Understandable. Right now, do you still see -- I heard there was triage there on campus. Is there still a tremendous presence of law enforcement and first responders?

ANDREWS: Yes. There's still a lot up there.

BALDWIN: Yes. And also just as far as, you know, you live in this community, you live across the street from this community college, I imagine you know people who attended this college. How close is Roseburg?

ANDREWS: Very. I mean, it's a rural area. You know somebody through somebody and we lived on a ranch before we moved here. And it's quieter than our ranch. It's real quiet. My own children went to that college. They are older now.

BALDWIN: Sure.

ANDREWS: Actually, my daughter has been waiting since 10:30 down at the end of the road to come because I'm supposed to cut her hair and they won't let her through.

[15:45:00] BALDWIN: They are being very, very careful. It's understandable.

Lorie Andrews, I'm so sorry. Thank you for taking a moment in calling CNN. Living across the street here describing a student wrapped in a blanket and bloodied, seven ambulances, one after another, leaving this campus. This is for the first time we have actually heard a description of hearing what sounded like fireworks shots lasting 60 seconds and then nothing.

Deborah Feyerick is with me. Harry Houck is with me. Sixty seconds worth of fireworks sounding shots and then nothing. That's a lot.

HOUCK: That's a lot. In 60 seconds, if you have an automatic weapon with 30-round clips, you could probably let off five or six of those clips over 150 rounds, 200 rounds easy. And maybe even more in a 60- second period. So it very interesting.

It seems like this attack was pretty well planned also. I mean, this guy hit the location and went right to the classrooms and started shooting people. And so, it seems like he probably knew the area pretty well. Had it well planned, went in with weapons, fired so many shots and knew exactly what classrooms to go to, whether there would been the students in. It's a terrible tragedy. You know, another thing here also is that these schools are so vulnerable, there are too many of these happening. Too many of these attacks happened.

BALDWIN: Say it again.

HOUCK: And we need to do something here to try to -- it looks like these schools need to have some kind of tighter security to stop people from entering these areas with weapons. Just saying that the school is a gun-free zone is not enough. We need security. We need people to be checked for weapons when they are going to schools. It's just happening too often. Too often.

BALDWIN: I sat down with people recently all touch by gun violence in Washington, D.C. And I'm sure they would say much more than school security is part of the solution.

But Deborah Feyerick, looking at you, you have new information.

FEYERICK: We do. What we are learning now according to a source who is involved in this is that the man appears to be in his late 20s. The alleged gunman appears to be in his late 20s. The person was online yesterday talking to others about what he was going to do. There was an ongoing conversation. Investigators and detectives are now looking at all those posts, looking at the thread of the conversation to determine specifically who he was engaged with and whether this was sort of an idle conversation or what triggered him to actually carry out this act, whether he was prompted, compelled, egged on, had it in his mind, it was not going to be tapped out of it. But based on the thread of the conversation, this was something he got in his mind to do and he was having a conversation about it online with others. And right now it does not appear there's any link to terrorism, international terrorism. Clearly, one can define this or describe it as a domestic terrorism, but this is not international terrorism as we have seen recently.

BALDWIN: To Harry's point about the potential for a premeditation, you know, when we are talking about this back and forth online, I'm wondering, you may not have the answer, how long had this male alleged shooter been talking about this? Do we know?

FEYERICK: We don't know how long. What we do know is that there's a thread, a conversation that began yesterday.

BALDWIN: With someone else.

FEYERICK: They did with other people online talking about what he was going to do. And as Harry says it really was well planned because it started in one building. He had familiarity. The gunman had familiarity with the building, with the campus, he knew how to get in, he knew how to move. And again it doesn't appear to be a coincidence that it began in one building and moved to another because once somebody hears shooting in one area, chances are they will close the doors. They will go into lockdown. That gives a gunman, a shooter access, complete unrestricted access to a second building where they don't know what's going on just yet. There's an element of surprise. Maybe not in the first building once the shooting starts, but in the second building, certainly, there's that element of what's going on now. That's all in play.

BALDWIN: Go ahead.

HOUCK: And what's also really important here is that, you know, we have - we know about a conversation that was going on yesterday about the possible shooting for today. All right. What a lot of people got to understand is when they see something like this, all right, that's why we have see something say something. You see something like that even if you think somebody's just blowing off steam or just talking, call the police and let them know what you're hearing. Because there's no way I can make a determination when I'm reading about some lunatic who was talking on twitter or on Facebook that he's going to do something whether or not this person's really going to commit an attack like that or not. So people have to see something, say something. You see something like that going on, notify the police immediately. This way we might have been able to stop this from occurring today.

[15:50:01] BALDWIN: Jonathan Gilliam, do you want to add to that?

GILLIAM: Yes. You know, there's colleges all over this country like Vasser (ph) College here little bit upstate New York where they have security guards that aren't armed. And it's a gun-free zone. So you really are setting people up for -- and law enforcement for somewhat of a failure when you have an active shooter scenario.

And I think colleges, you know, and really policy has to be looked at what's effective. And I think what you see here, you know, this shows you how quickly these things can go bad. And these gun-free zones just like what happened in Tennessee with this shooter that went onto a military installation which was a gun-free zone. We see that the only thing that's going to stop the gun is another gun. And I know that sounds cliche and political, but I think these are things we have to look at rather than just saying we need to look at mental illness, we need to stop people from having guns. We need to start looking at what's effective in stopping a shooter. And I think just saying, hey, nobody carry a gun here is not effective.

One thing I do want to say though to add some comfort to this is the one neighbor said that there appeared to be somebody wrapped in a blanket and bleeding and put in an ambulance. That is actually better than somebody wrapped in a blanket sitting in a room somewhere because the fact that they were on an ambulance mean they did triage, they were heading for help.

So, again, when you look at something it may not appear the way that we think it is because of the way we see it. So hopefully God bless that person. And that they're still alive. BALDWIN: That's right.

I think -- let me also just point out, Jonathan, thank you. We are getting more of the audio. This is back and forth from the initial calls that came in with regard to the shooting here in Roseburg. This is between an officer and dispatch.

So the officer said, the suspect is down, we have multiple gunshot wounds, we are going to need multiple ambulances on scene. And then please have dispatch as many ambulances as possible to the incident. We have upwards of 20 victims. And then they discuss how many red they have notify the local hospitals and then they throw numbers in here which, again, that's the part we can't fully confirm is this is really still a fluid situation I'm pointing out. I just want to be entirely transparent with you and say.

Again, preliminary reports indicate ten dead, could be more. We're hearing from multiple sources that number will likely rise. And at least 20 wounded.

Lieutenant colonel Rick Francona, he is in Oregon. He's very familiar with this area.

Colonel, what more would you like to add?

RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST (on the phone): Well, I heard all these discussion of the motivation and all that. And I have to tell you, I mean, this kind of incident in a town like Roseburg is unheard of. And it just goes against the very fabric of this community. I've been talking to some of my friends that live right in the town. And they said one of the reasons that they moved there was because it was away from all of the problems of big cities and things like this you don't have to deal with and aren't we lucky to live here we don't have to live with these kinds of things and here it comes home.

BALDWIN: I'm sure people living in columbine and, you know, and Sandy Hook, in Connecticut and in Aurora, Colorado would all say the exact same thing. You know, and talking so much recently about gun violence in this country. You know, you can talk to these survivors and victims and they will all tell you it does not discriminate.

FRANCONA: I remember being on this campus many times, you know, silting in these classrooms. And the thought that someone would burst in with a weapon never crossed my mind. It's just something that you're not mentally prepared for.

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Deborah.

FEYERICK: Yes. And another thing is that you have to keep in mind is these kinds of shootings, they always target the soft targets. Partly the point that why aren't there people on campus? Why is it so easy to get into these buildings?

Well, shooters like these depending on what the motive was ultimately, they target areas that are simply easy to hit. It's not an act of bravery. This is an act of cowardice. This is the act of somebody who is intent on some sort of violence for whatever reason, whatever sort of crazy insane reason.

BALDWIN: Movie theaters, schools, churches.

FEYERICK: That's exactly right. And it recalls to me the shooting at UC Santa Barbara.

BALDWIN: Yes.

FEYERICK: More than a year ago where that young man just began firing at sorority girls, popular kids on campus because he felt that he was rejected. And he wrote, you know, a huge manifesto which I read through which you see the wanderings of an insane mind. And somebody who can justify why it is they're doing this.

And again, we don't know what the status of this individual is whether he was neutralized and injured, whether he was neutralized and killed. Police are not releasing that. We do know there's going to be a press conference soon.

But again, these are all things that are under investigation as to why. But this was a very soft target. He began in one building, moved to another building and it was methodical.

[15:55:20] HOUCK: Right. He knew he was going to have plenty of time to do the killing that he wanted to do here. We've got quite a few people here dead and seriously injured as a result of this attack. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew he would have plenty of time until police arrived no matter who called the police first in that location where he'd be able to kill as many people as possible in the limited amount of time he had.

BALDWIN: Tom Fuentes, I want you to add to that and also what Deborah Feyerick has been reporting about this back and forth social media between the shooter and someone else just within the last 24 hours.

FUENTES: Well, regarding the social media, I'd like to hear more about it who was it with and what exactly, you know, how extensive was the conversation to lead the other person to a conclusion that violence was imminent? We don't know enough about the context of that conversation.

As far as protecting these schools or how much time, my daughter was down the hall in the same dorm where the first killings happened at Virginia Tech when that occurred. And that shooter with two handguns killed more than 30 people in the engineering building. And two more in the dormitory where my daughter was.

So, you know, this could happen so quickly that you're not going to have a quick enough response to stop a multiple group of people from getting killed if the person just methodically starts gunning people down. And that's the unfortunate thing. And if you look at these campuses, you know, trying to talk about magnetometers and security at every entrance of every building in every school, there's 100,000 schools in this country. And if you take a campus like this one, does it have 10, 20 buildings? And the buildings open for class at maybe 7:00 a.m. and stay open until 9:00, 10:00 at night, used maybe six, seven days a week. How many entrances per building. You're talking a massive amount of investment for the machines, for the people, for the security at every entrance of every school. All over the country. And then like you've said you got to talk about all the other theaters and other targets. So this is a huge problem just talking about security is not going to cut it.

BALDWIN: Tom Fuentes, thank you so much for weighing in. I think a lot of people were all hearing you. And Deborah Feyerick staying on the reporting here.

If you are again just joining us we are looking at pictures. Harry Houck is with me, former NYPD looking at pictures as we are still trying to confirm precisely if these numbers have grown in the two hours we've been on the story here out of Roseburg, Oregon. Preliminary reports at least ten people have been killed in a school shooting that started in a science building. And this male shooter worked from classroom to classroom. We talked to a woman who lived just across the street from this school who's own daughter had gone to this community college who said she heard what sounded like fireworks for 60 seconds and then nothing.

I can tell you the shooter has been neutralized. And one report potentially handcuffed. Does that mean the shooter is dead or alive? We still don't know. There's a lot we don't know.

Harry Houck, you're looking at these aerials with me. So now, really, this is the first time we're getting an idea of how big and where these buildings are spaced out around campus. But it sounds like it did involve multiple classrooms and potentially multiple buildings as well.

HOUCK: Right. You can see it's a pretty good size campus there also. You know, this guy might have been a student there for all we know.

BALDWIN: We don't know yet.

HOUCK: Definitely a possibility.

BALDWIN: Yes. Familiar with the area it seems.

HOUCK: Right. Very familiar with the area. Knew exactly where to go. You've got -- as you see right now the police what they're probably doing right now is putting the crime scene together. You've got those who were killed are still at the scene. They're not going to be removed for quite a while because the crime scene unit has got to go through there. They're probably going to match all the shells. They've got the ATF there. They're probably doing a background on that weapon now to find out exactly where that weapon came from, how it was purchased, was it a stolen weapon, was it legally purchased, was it purchased in the Oregon area, we don't know. We're going to be able to find out that information also. They're going to run bullet -- shell casings through ballistics to see if it was used in a crime before also. And you know, they are going to be checking shell casings, you know, how many weapons did he have? Did he had two weapons? Did he had three weapons?

BALDWIN: Did he re-load?

HOUCK: Exactly. We're going to be able to tell from the shell casings that are laying around on the ground you are going to be able to recreate the whole shooting as it occurred through the crime scene unit.

BALDWIN: At least ten people killed. At least more than 20 have been wounded here in the school shooting in Roseburg, Oregon.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me the last two hours. We're going to stay on this. More from this school shooting in Oregon.

Jake Tapper and "The LEAD" start right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.