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Active Shooter on UCLA Campus; Two Victims Dead From Campus Shooting. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired June 01, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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


[14:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, HOST: Teddi, I will let you go we're thinking about you, hoping everyone is going to be OK, thank you so much. Freshman at UCLA, essentially hold up on lockdown in the school's cafeteria there. Teddi, thank you so much.

It is the bottom of the hour here, I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching live special breaking coverage here of a sad situation unfolding on the campus of UCLA. There really in the heart of Los Angeles. We have now confirmed from UCLA there are two -- two individuals, two victims who are dead as a result of what police there are calling an active shooter situation.

My colleague Kyung Lah is standing by in Los Angeles to essentially, Kyung, bring us up to speed. The call came in, I know, about ten minutes till 10:00 this morning from the campus. Take me from there.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The call came in because we started getting a report that students were told to shelter in place, that there was a reported shooting on campus. We have just received a news release from UCLA. UCLA saying that it happened at approximately 10:00 a.m. this morning and that they responded -- that the LAPD responded to multiple calls of shots fired on the campus.

Where this happened was the engineer building, the warning that went out to the university was that if you were in or near the engineering building shelter in place. The campus was put on lockdown. Students were told to avoid this area. Since then we are getting confirmation that two victims were shot from the LAPD and UCLA. Those victims are now dead. UCLA telling us in this news release that those two victims are both male. This is still an active shooter investigation.

There has been a tremendous response from law enforcement. The LAPD, the University Police, they are putting on tactical gear, they're walking through these narrow streets. They have their long guns drawn. This is as densely populated area. You can see how close these buildings are to each other. You can see the amount of concern, the response from law enforcement because there are so many students that attend this campus. There are 43,000 students that are enrolled at UCLA. That doesn't even count. The nearby medical center. I just heard from a friend of mine whose inside that medical center who cannot get out, that medical center has been put on lockdown as well. There are a number of employees that work on this campus. This is as

densely populated area of the west side of Los Angeles. So a lot of concern from law enforcement as they try to figure out exactly what is happening. We have not, Brooke, we have not heard any reports of anyone being in custody. Brooke?

BALDWIN: And, again, just quickly, Kyung, we don't have any sort of suspect description. We don't know if it's one person, two people. Police just don't know.

LAH: Correct. There's a lot of information floating around. We have not been able to confirm anything that we feel strong enough to be able to report. We're still working on that, but what we have heard is that this is an active shooter situation.

BALDWIN: Got it.

LAH: A lot of people are on this campus and they are asking everyone to shelter in place.

BALDWIN: We are talking to a lot of people in campus. Kyung, thank you do not go too far, please.

I have Berenice on the phone. Berenice, I understand you are a student on campus at UCLA. Are you OK?

BERENICE ELIZARRAREZ, STUDENT AT UCLA: Yes.

BALDWIN: Tell me about what you're hearing, what you know.

ELIZARRAREZ:: There's just a lot of police activity outside.

BALDWIN: And I understand you have a daughter?

ELIZARRAREZ: Yes.

BALDWIN: And you're worried about your family.

ELIZARRAREZ: Yes, I just want to go home.

BALDWIN: You want to go home. Berenice, I don't blame you, I'd be feeling the same way in your same shoes. Tell me how you learned about this.

ELIZARRAREZ: I got a bruin alert, e-mail and text, and we were told to just go on lockdown and lock the doors.

BALDWIN: And so you've done that?

ELIZARRAREZ: Yes.

BALDWIN: Are you alone, or do you at least have some people with you?

ELIZARRAREZ: No I have people with us, in the room next to us. My classmates are there and then in the room with me, I have two classmates and an adult. BALDWIN: Have you seen, I know police are asking you all to stay away

from windows but do you know anything about -- are police communicating with you all? I mean I know this is a huge campus, I know that they're clearing different or clearing different students. Have you had any interaction with law enforcement today?

ELIZARRAREZ: No, we haven't, we're waiting for them. We just know that the shooter is possibly wearing black trunks and black jacket and he's white and he's 6 feet tall.

BALDWIN: We haven't got that I know in times like these where there's a lot of miss-information floating around and so I just don't want to pass along something we don't know for sure. And Berenice, you are - have you been on campus since this morning, since this happened?

[14:35:10]

ELIZARRAREZ: Yes.

BALDWIN: OK. Bernice, we're thinking about you, thank you so much. Please stay safe. Let me pivot now to our justice correspondent Evan Perez. Evan Perez, I know the FBI since they're so close, you know they've been on scene helping out as LAPD have taken the lead here. Tell me more about the law enforcement activity.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, at this point we have both the FBI and the ATF at the scene there. They're trying to best figure out how to clear these buildings and figure out what exactly happened here. Obviously we still only know of these two people who have been shot. We don't know where the shooter, is whether the shooter managed to get away or whether if possibly one of the people dead is -- it was the shooter that people first were alerted to.

All of that is still very much in flux simply because law enforcement doesn't have any information right now as to where possibly the perpetrator, the shooter, might have gone.

We do know that as Kyung Lah was mentioning that you know this all began with an alert that people heard gun shots on that campus. And as you said it's a sprawling, very large campus. The FBI is actually right near, walking distance from that - from that location so they got there pretty quickly.

It's really remarkable though that at this point we still don't know very much as to whether or not it's still an active shooter situation or whether or not these two people who were shot were all including the shooter. Again, that's information that we're waiting to hear from law enforcement, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Let me just - Evan stay with me. Let me just read this, I just got handed this I believe, this is from LAPD. The LAPD, UCLA police began a search for suspects and victims. Actually stand by. We've got a news conference again.

JAMES HERREN, CHIEF OF POLICE UCLA POLICE DEPARTMENT: Good morning. My name is Jim Heron, I'm the Chief of Police for the UCLA Police Department. As you have already learned, we have had an on-campus shooting this morning. The unfortunate fact is that there are two victims who are deceased from that shooting.

We have still on campus an active investigation. We have an active search to ensure there are no further victims, that no one else is in harm's way and we're still searching to see if there is a suspect that may be in the area. Those are questions we don't have answered yet.

But I can tell you what we did immediately upon having learned about this incident. We immediately put out a bruin alert, and that's our campus alert notification system to advise all of those in our campus community of an incident that occurred that could be dangerous to them and we requested them to stay out of the area. Right now currently the campus is on lockdown.

We have literally hundreds of police officers and agents here on campus assisting in this active situation. UCPD is working in concert with the FBI, with Los Angeles Police Department, with ATF and with L.A. City Fire Department as well as Santa Monica College Police. We have a lot of resources here that we're dedicating to ensure the safety of this entire campus community.

That will tell you that with the response that we have had, in the only from our own officers who have responded within just brief moments of receiving that first call. It is something that we have trained to do, and so when our officers arrived on scene they immediately began putting teams together that are considered rescue teams, to help those who have been injured and also search teams to look for suspects who may be in the area. That was implemented immediately and we've not stopped yet.

We will continue to go until we are sure that this campus is safe and if there is an outstanding suspect we will have that person or persons in custody.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We assume the gunman's dead? How many gunmen?

HERREN: We don't know. It is certainly possible that one of the victims is a shooter, but we don't know that yet.

[CROSS-TALK]

HERREN: There is that possibility but we haven't confirmed that yet.

UNIDENFIFIED FEMALE: Can you tell us where in the building - in the engineering building the shootings occurred and what the circumstances were.

HERREN: The location exactly in the building I can't divulge right now. It's in the engineering building, as you know. It is inside where there are numerous people. In fact, quite honestly we still have dozens of people in the building who have sheltered in place. Other than the building, the area outside is called the Court of Sciences, we have asked everybody from that location to please leave the area just to ensure their safety.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So there's only one location?

HERREN: One location so far.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the victims are inside the building.

HERREN: The victims were located inside the building.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many shooters or gunmen are you looking for at this point?

HERREN: Unknown.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sex of the victims?

HERREN: I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Male, female, the victims?

HERREN: I don't have that information right now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One more question.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did you first receive the call?

HERREN: I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did you first receive the call?

HERREN: Through our 911 dispatch center in the police station. We received the call.

[14:40:03]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that came from inside the building or -

HERREN: I'm not sure where the origin of that call was but we received it at the station.

[CROSS-TALK]

HERREN: We will update you with more information as we're able to develop it, we appreciate it. I'm sorry -

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know if the victims are students - were students?

HERREN: I don't no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you chief.

HERREN: Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And no other injuries right? And nobody else injured? Can you just confirm that they're saying that there are other injuries. Are there any other injuries? Any other injuries?

[INAUDIBLE]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, Thank you, chief. Sorry, trying to get the latest information.

BALDWIN: All right, still so many questions here, you can hear them being shouted out to that UCLA police chief there. Two bits of information confirming, we knew that there were two dead on campus, two males, according to - according to LAPD, and that was a new piece of information that he said that the two victims were found inside the building, inside that engineering building in the heart of the campus there at UCLA. Not quite sure if one of those who is deceased is the shooter or not.

Stephanie Elam is on campus there at UCLA. Stephanie, I know you were moved. Tell me where you are now.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've been pretty much been moving around the entire time since I last talked to you Brooke following what activity we could see here. And we watched Greg, if you can go ahead and shoot down this way, just so I can show for people who know the campus, we watched officers walk around and come up this way and then go back to originally where we were, Brooke, when I told you they were telling us to back up so we're not quite there. We've backed away from there.

One bit of interest there, but they are inside of this building here in a hallway, and that's where the activity seems to be contained. But I have to say that there is -- there are more students who are showing up on campus now. I'm seeing more people walking around, not a lot, but just a few people who are still coming out here now. The helicopters are still above, and the police seem to be pushing everybody back into a certain area, but it doesn't seem like they are running around as rampantly as they were earlier in the morning. That seems to have slowed down. It seems to be much more directed now how they are moving so we're continuing to watch this here.

But obviously the students that are here, a lot of them nervous about their finals, about what they have to do to finish up this year of school. So I saw people coming out here. One guy saying he was more nervous about missing his final and so that's why he was out on campus right now, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Stephanie, thank you. Forgive me. I had a voice in my ear. I'm about to bring in - Stephanie stand by, a Pranasha. Pranasha is a fourth year student there on campus at UCLA. Pranasha it's Brooke, can you hear me?

PRANASHA SHRESTHA, STUDENT AT UCLA: Yes, I can hear you.

BALDWIN: We're not going to give away where you are on campus. So let me just ask you first how are you doing?

SHRESTHA: I'm fine. We're definitely shaken up but we're doing OK, just trying to stay safe.

BALDWIN: How many people are with you in your location on campus? SHRESTHA: There's about 12, 13 of us in the room right now.

BALDWIN: 12 in the room, and I know that you know police are going to different buildings. It's a massive campus. It's going to take some time to find if there is an additional shooter or the shooter. Have you heard from law enforcement. I know you got your bruin alert this morning didn't you?

SHRESTHA: Yes, we did that's how we found out.

BALDWIN: Can you tell me more about what it said?

SHRESTHA: Yes. So basically the first one just said to avoid engineering 5 - yes, engineering 4 sorry, which is the building nearby. And the second one alerted us that to basically be on lockdown and not leave the room.

BALDWIN: Do you -- have you seen activity outside of wherever you are, or is it just almost like an odd ghost town right now, your campus?

SHRESTHA: No. Where we are right now, we have very little information of what's going on outside just because we've been on lockdown. We're trying to minimize, you know, our noise and everything else. We are hearing some friends who have seen -- who have seen people running and basically trying to leave certain areas.

BALDWIN: Pranasha, we're looking at what I think is your twitter page or a twitter photo. It says doors open outward with no locks so we had to improvise our own locking mechanism. What is this a photo of?

SHRESTHA: So the classroom we're in doesn't have locks that we can personally lock. I think you need like a janitorial key in order to lock the doors and since they open outward there was really no way for us to secure ourselves so we decided to improvise our own locking mechanism for the rooms with chairs and belts and whatever else we could to secure the room.

BALDWIN: Oh, my goodness. You have essentially tried to jerry rig a lock to make sure if somebody comes by that they don't come in.

SHRESTHA: Yes.

BALDWIN: Oy, and so you are in a classroom I presume that there are multiple classrooms in your building and so you know could be hundreds of students in just your building alone on a campus of 43,000 are staying put right now.

SHRESTHA: Yes.

[14:45:07]

BALDWIN: OK. Pranasha, thank you so much for calling in, I appreciate it. We are keeping all of you very close in our thoughts as we've been reporting from UCLA that two people are dead on campus inside that engineering building. Tom Fuentes is with me, former assistant director of the FBI. And Tom

Fuentes, I -- let me go back to what -- when we heard from the Chief of Police there at UCLA he said that, you know, there are two dead, they have confirmed that. We know they're two males, possibly one is the shooter, they don't know. But he said it's still an active investigation, it's still an active search. My question to you is with such a massive campus how do they go and clear all these buildings? That could take hours.

TOM FUENTES, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FBI: Well, I think, Brooke, the hope is they won't have to clear all those buildings. That could take more than hours. That could take days so they're going to hope that's not necessary. They're going to hope the situation is contained. And I think that if there's a possibility that one of the two victims was actually the shooter and is now dead, they will be trying to confirm that as quickly as possible. But yet still be searching if there's anyone else that might have been involved.

So that's the problem here is that even if one of the dead is the shooter -- is one of the shooters, is there anybody else at large? One of the other problems that occurs, Brooke, is that when the call comes into the police and when they put out the word to respond to the shooting, respond to the call for help, lockdown the campus. That all takes some time and in five or ten minutes in the interim a person can walk ten blocks away or run 20 blocks from that scene. So the problem is do they get there in time? Did they have officers close enough to actually contain it to one or two buildings, or could that person be halfway out of town by now?

BALDWIN: Right, right. And we heard the police chief or one of the Captain from LAPD talking about how they're you know, re-allocating resources from the city police to make sure the priority is on the campus. We're looking at pictures of you know fire crews, LAFD here on the screen. I know that there's you know EMS, ambulances. We've seen you know stretchers be pulled out of ambulances. No-one has seen anybody on stretchers, per se, but you know you've been looking at these pictures has anything in particular struck you, Tom?

FUENTES: No, not yet. I think right now we see the normal activity trying to resolve the situation. You know and also a friend reminded me that there will be hundreds of campus video cameras, security cameras in locations so they will be able to start really getting people to analyze those videos and see, especially at the building where the shooting occurred, the engineering building, you know, can they see whether somebody ran out of that building right at the time running down the street or something. Are there cameras inside the entry way to the building that might be useful? So that also will be going on, analysis of the security videos available from that campus area.

BALDWIN: OK. Tom Fuentes, thank you, standby. Bernard Kerik is still with us, Former Commissioner of the New York Police Department.

And so have you -- we're about to get, and guys, get in my ear when we have him, here we go - these are stills. This is closed-circuit you know T.V's within hallways. I don't know if this is specifically the engineering building where apparently the shooting took place or just another building on campus here. But it's police searching and clearing the hallways. Can you talk me through these pictures, Bernard.

BERNARD KERIK, FORMER COMMISSIONER, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT: I can't -- I can't see them from where I am.

BALDWIN: Let me describe them for you since you don't have a T.V. where you are. You see you know essentially law enforcement in tactical gear, long guns in -- in a hallway surrounded by doors.

KERIK: Well, listen, these are the special operations teams, the S.W.A.T. teams, if you will. That are going to have to clear these buildings, remove the students, get the students out of the way and then search for possible suspects.

You know, Tom Fuentes brought up a really good point, and I think this is -- this is going to be the time restraint, if you will, on, you know, knocking this investigation down in time, and that is the internal cameras of the facilities.

If they identified where these two victims are, they know where they are. They have already gotten them out of there and to the hospital. That's going to be the first focal point of the cameras. The intelligence guys are going to go in, they're going to pull that data, they're going to look at those cameras, look at what happened prior to and after. They'll have a pretty basic idea, a good idea of whether or not there were any other shooters other than possibly those two that were there and they will be able to make argues determination rather quickly and to get that information out to the field.

[14:50:03]

And the last thing I want to say is make sure that you're viewers that are watching that are locked down in these buildings only listen - when you get those alerts, only listen -- pay attention to the alerts from the authorities. You know. I'm watching the -- the stuff online, and there's all kinds of stuff out there that's not real, not confirmed. They only need to listen to the authorities. Don't do anything that some kid puts out over social media. Make sure they are listening to the authorities.

BALDWIN: No, it's a great point. We've talked to a number of different students. And you know listen, they're on Facebook, they're on twitter, they're passing along information that just isn't factual, that's the tricky part when you cover a story like this or when you find yourself accidentally in the middle of a story like this is you just don't actually know.

So absolutely, pay attention to what's being said by law enforcement there on campus at UCLA and LAPD. Back to the point you were making, and Tom made it before, about really taking a good look at these surveillance pictures from inside the engineering build where these two victims have been found, because one of the questions is, as we've been discussing is whether or not one of those victims was the actual shooter. And so by looking at that surveillance video they should be able to determine whether or not that's the case, but then following up on that how will they know if there were others involved if it takes so long to search the campus?

KERIK: Well, it really depends on what they find on those cameras. You know and that's - when I -- when I started talking earlier and I said if this is really still an active shooter scenario, that's sort of what I meant. You know you have two victims down. You don't have any other calls of ongoing gun fire. You don't have anyone that's seen a suspect movement, you know, so the first thing in my mind was, you know, what's going on with these two people? Where's the suspects, no other locations, no other sightings. This is stuff that you have to consider in advance.

BALDWIN: Yes, Bernard Kerik, Former NYPD Commissioner thank you, sir, so much. I'm going to ask you to stand by.

We're going to take a quick commercial break. You're watching live continuing coverage here of a fatal shooting on campus at UCLA. Two dead. Two male victims dead inside the engineering building in the heart of campus. Could the shooter still be out there or could one of the shooters be the victims? So much still unknown at this point. Quick break. We're back after this.

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[14:56:50]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right. We're back up. You're watching CNN here top of the hour just about breaking news. Welcoming our viewers here in the United States and all around the world.

Let me just, if you're just tuning in, let me get you caught up on really what's been a tragic day in the city of Los Angeles, in the heart of the massive sprawling campus there at UCLA.

There is still a campus wide lockdown, and we can now confirm from UCLA that the two victims who were found inside of this engineering building are both dead. They are both men. We are told one of them could possibly be the shooter. Here's police.

HERREN: As you already have learned, we have had an on-campus shooting this morning. The unfortunate fact is there are two victims who are deceased from that shooting. We have still on campus an active investigation. We have an active search to ensure there's no further victims, to make sure no else is in harm's way and we're still searching to see if there's a suspect that may be in the area. Those are questions we don't have answered yet.

BALDWIN: So that's was the Chief of Police there for campus police, UCLA. I can tell you that Charlie Beck, he is the Police Chief of all of LAPD, I'm told he is on campus. He will be briefing the media here momentarily so we're going to keep our eye to the screen for that. But just as we're looking at these live pictures here it's frightening

for some 43,000 students here on the massive sprawling campus. Next week is exams. There's a lot of activity and next week there is commencement as well. And, again, we don't know a lot. There's a lot of misinformation in stories like this. Let's just be crystal clear. We don't have confirmation on the shooter's whereabouts, could the shooter be one of the victims you know from within this engineering building? We don't know.

Obviously you're seeing all this law enforcement activity, FBI, ATF, there helping assisting as well. It's an active scene and so they are now searching, clearing and going building to building, clearing students and looking to see if the shooter or possibly secondary shooter is somewhere out there.

Again, UCLA campus is still on lockdown. We've been talking to a number of people, both employees of the school and also students who are frightened and understandably so, who have gotten their bruin alerts coming in this morning. It sounds like UCLA was phenomenally prepared, sadly, for an event like this and so they were made aware of this right around 10:00 o'clock this morning pacific time.

A twitter alert just going out the past couple of minutes and it read lockdown continues. Do not go outside unless instructed by UCPD. That's the campus police. Do not come to campus if outside. Go indoors and lockdown. And again, it bears repeating, this is a massive campus, this is you know some 43,000 students are enrolled there and that's just students. Think about employees and faculty and staff.

The LAPD also has put the City of Los Angeles on tactical alert, and that just means, as we heard from a captain of the LAPD, they're reallocating resources so more resources can be, you know, displaced over at campus. And, again, as I mentioned ATF and FBI are on the scene and the president has been briefed as well.

So that is what we know right now. Let me go first to this hour, Stephanie Elam, she's our correspondent -- actually, stand by, Stephanie, we're going to go to Evan Perez, our justice correspondent who has some new information.

Evan Perez, what are you learning?

PEREZ: Brooke, I think I want to draw attention to - if you look at the police there at the scene, what we're trying to get a sense -