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Ten Killed in Mass Shooting at Colorado Grocery Store. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired March 23, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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


ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Colorado alone.

[07:00:00]

There have been so many mass shootings that they have come to be known by just one name, Columbine, Aurora. The one known victim from Monday's incident 51-year-old Police Officer Eric Talley. He was the first officer to respond to the scene, and he leaves behind seven children. We will hear from an eyewitness to this shooting in just a moment.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Boulder Police have a suspect in custody. Authorities say he was injured and apprehended at the scene, his motive unknown at this hour. One senior law enforcement source tells CNN an AR-style rifle was used in this massacre. Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper now calling for federal action on gun control.

Let's go live to the scene and get the very latest. CNN's Dan Simon is there. Dan, what can you tell us?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. Just so much shock and sadness that here we are talking about another mass shooting happening in this country at another mass shooting happening in the state of Colorado, which has seen so much bloodshed over the years.

A lot of questions right now. The primary question being what would cause that shooter to go into that supermarket and begin firing seemingly at random.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON (voice over): Ten people are dead after a gunman opened fire inside this Boulder, Colorado, supermarket Monday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right down there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my God. Guys, we got people down inside King Soopers. Look --

SIMON: Witnesses recall hearing several loud bangs before customers frantically ran for the exits.

RYAN BOROWSKI, COLORADO SUPERMARKET SHOOTING WITNESS: This feels like the safest spot in America, and I just nearly got killed for getting a soda, you know, and a bag of chips.

SIMON: Police quickly arrived at the scene. The shooter was still inside the store firing a rifle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 136, still multiple shots being fired at us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Start pushing slow, be advised, we do not know where he is. He is armed with a rifle. Our officers shot back and returned fire.

NEVEN SLOAN, COLORADO SUPERMARKET SHOOTING WITNESS: I heard just like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and I immediately sprinted over to her. And I said, hey, we got to get out of here. I like pushed open the emergency door and I told her to run.

SIMON: Law enforcement immediately worked to secure the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the Boulder Police Department. The entire building is surrounded. I need you to surrender now.

SIMON: Eventually ramming into the building and forcing their way in.

STEVEN MCHUGH, FAMILY WAS AT SUPERMARKET DURING SHOOTING: My son-in- law walked into the pharmacy for him to get a COVID-19 shot, and the shooter came in, shot the woman in front of them. They hid, ran upstairs or hiding in a coat closet for the last hour.

Half a dozen cops came in through the roof, got them and then told them, you know, stay quiet and they're okay. This is not okay with me. And this has put in a big pitch for gun control. You know, when it's your family --

SIMON: 51-year-old Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley was among the victims.

POLICE CHIEF MARIS HEROLD, BOULDER, COLORADO: Officer Talley responded to the scene, he was the first on the scene, and he was fatally shot.

SIMON: The suspect was wounded and is currently in police custody. The district attorney vows justice will be served for the nine victims and Officer Talley.

MICHAEL DOUGHERTY, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, BOULDER COLORADO: His life was cut far too short as he responded to the shooting taking place at King Soopers. These were people going about their day, doing their food shopping and their lives were cut abruptly and tragically short by the shooter, who is now in custody.

I promise the victims and the people of the state of Colorado that we will secure justice and do everything we must do to get justice in this case.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON (on camera): Boulder authorities have scheduled a news conference later this morning where we hope to gather new information, learn new information about the suspect and the victims. But, Alisyn, we know this investigation, this initial investigation, will take several days to complete which will include processing the scene, interviewing all of the witnesses, gathering any potential surveillance video and, of course, gathering information about the suspect. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Dan, thank you very much.

Joining us now is Ryan Borowski. He was inside the grocery store when the massacre began. Hey, Ryan, I know you had a long night. I know you're still processing everything you just lived through. How are you coping this morning?

BOROWSKI: I'm interested to see how I continue to cope. Yesterday was different, you know, shock, confusion, strange feelings of calm. But I'm just taking it one moment at a time.

CAMEROTA: That's all you can do. I mean, having covered these far too many times, I mean, countless times, it will be a roller coaster ride, frankly, emotionally, because of everything that you lived through. And so just tell us where were you when you heard the first shots?

[07:05:00]

BOROWSKI: So, there's two entrances to the building, a west entrance and an east entrance. I was closer to the west entrance at the time near the front of the store, near the self checkout machines, but maybe just five, ten feet up an aisle.

CAMEROTA: And why had you gone into the store at that time?

BOROWSKI: For a soda, just a bag of chips and a cherry coke. I started to walk towards the other side of the store, I was thinking about getting some Ben & Jerry's, half-baked ice cream, and just decided it was too far, just some arbitrary decision like that and changed my mind, walked a different direction, grabbed a bag of chips instead. And just shortly after that decision, I heard the first gunshots. And by the third, I was running.

CAMEROTA: And tell us what you saw in there.

BOROWSKI: What I saw was a terrified face running towards me. She was a woman, you know, shorter than myself. And the first two shots that happened, I saw her face and her running down the aisle towards me. I turned and kept up with her and we all ran down the aisle towards the back of the store together.

So I saw just a lot of very wide eyes. I'm sure my eyes were just as terrified as everybody else's. The employees in the back of the house didn't know what was going on, so we told them that there was a shooter and they told us where the exit was.

CAMEROTA: How did you know to run to the back of the store? Why were you running to the back of the store instead of out the front? BOROWSKI: Several things, I guess. The sounds were coming from the front of the store, from slightly the opposite end. But had I run out the front, he could have seen me. The terrified face running towards me, you see somebody running towards you with a terrified face, you run in the same direction. And I used to work in a grocery store, so maybe that helped.

But I knew running towards the back, if I got into the back of the store, I could find the exit. There's always a loading dock and in a grocery store. So, as I was running that way, there must have been something in me that knew that I wasn't running into a corner. So I never stopped running.

CAMEROTA: Did you ever see -- did you see or hear the suspect?

BOROWSKI: It seemed pretty quiet. Like I said, I was back in an aisle, just a few feet. So I didn't see anybody. But in my memory, I don't remember anybody screaming either. The first shot came out like confusion and it was almost quiet, like in a restaurant when a waiter drops a tray of dishes, the whole restaurant gets quiet for a second. But if there had been a second tray of dishes and a third and a fourth and a fifth, that sort of reaction of the customers is a lot different.

So that first gunshot was confusing and I just remember silence between that next shot.

CAMEROTA: And how many gunshots do you think you heard?

BOROWSKI: I think I counted eight. Another person who ran out with me, his name was Allen, and he said 13 or 15. But to me, my recollection was pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and by the end of that series, I was probably in the back already. So, I feel like I heard eight shots.

CAMEROTA: Did you see any victims?

BOROWSKI: Everybody who was running out with me seemed to be without injury. One person did say that they saw somebody get shot.

CAMEROTA: I know -- I heard you say that before this, before yesterday, you thought Boulder was a very safe place. And now --

BOROWSKI: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- what do you think?

BOROWSKI: I'm going to say it's still a safe place despite that.

[07:10:00]

I want to say that. I want to say that the world, despite everything that's in the news, is still overall a safe place and that people are still, overall, good people who, despite the fact that there's people doing horrible, horrible things. But as far as the safety of Boulder, you know, it's been described as a bubble. And I never thought that this could happen here. But after the shooting, I walked home. My car was impounded in the lot essentially. So I walked home for two and a half hours, you know, on a trail system through the city of Boulder by myself after dark, no fear. And I love this city. And it's absolutely heartbreaking that this happened.

And I still feel safe here. And I still love this town, but I'm definitely removed of any illusion that I couldn't be swept up in gun violence.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I know that temptation to want to believe that people are still good people even after something horrific. And your experience does show it. I mean, you all saved each other. You found employees. You got them out. You saw other people, customers in the store, helped get them out. You all helped each other. That is really heartening.

But then there's Colorado's violent history, you know, coupled with that. This isn't the first time. I mean, of course, there was Columbine, as we all remember, in 1999. There was the Aurora Movie Theater in 2012. There was a Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015. There was a Walmart shooting in 2017. And how do you square all that?

BOROWSKI: I'm kind of a thinker. And I've obviously been thinking about these things for a while, but there're so many issues here. And if I had Superman's powers, like he did in one of the movie, I would throw all the nuclear bombs and guns and throw them into the sun. But I can't do that that's not the world we live in.

I feel that, you know, Columbine and Aurora both had this idea of violent movies in the background as maybe a motivating or triggering factor. I watched the most violent movies, but I'm also a meditator and I also do counseling.

And Jared Polis, our governor, who I admire and I appreciate, he said that this was another glimpse into the face of evil. And I pushed back against that. I don't -- I don't want to demonize people. I want to humanize everyone. And the shooter today was a human, a flawed person with something troubling his mind that eventually lashed out and attacked other people.

Any person can do that. A mother can do that. A father can do that. It doesn't matter what race or belief system you have. But if you have bad ideas in your mind and you don't get them out, then they're going to start to control you. And that's how I feel about today is that mental health and encouraging people to seek treatment, seek counseling and to know that they're not evil if they have evil thoughts, to know that they're not demons if they want to do something incredibly violent because thoughts are thoughts and actions are actions. And there's a world of difference. And people need to talk it out before thoughts become actions that hurt people.

CAMEROTA: We have a lawmaker coming up from Colorado, a congressperson. Do you have a message for her? BOROWSKI: What's her name?

CAMEROTA: Well, we have two coming up actually. We have Jason Crow and we also have Will Hurd coming up, we have a few lawmakers coming up. And I just want to know if you have a message for any lawmakers about what you would like to see happen?

BOROWSKI: I think that there are laws that exist for other things that don't exist for guns, you know, checks and balances in place that prevent people from causing massive amounts of harm.

[07:15:03]

There's no Second Amendment right to drive a car and people can have that taken away from them. People can have that taken away from them. People can their vote taken away from them. And to say that the only thing that people can't have taken away from them is their guns or not being allowed to have is their guns, that's one of those bad ideas that is polluting this nation.

And it makes it harder for police to be peaceful when they don't know whether or not the people that they might be arresting might have weapons on them, might have guns. So, I know there's the simplest of regulations that can be passed. And for some reason, our politicians aren't doing it. What those regulations are, I'm not sure. But I know there's some simple, clear-headed regulations that can be put into place that can slow this, that can maybe alert the police to knowing when there's somebody who owns a gun who is also mentally unbalanced.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean, look, Ryan, I mean, I don't expect you to have all the answers, nor do I expect any of us to have all the answers. But what I think that you're faceting on is something that we all feel in these moments, which is common sense tells us that we can do something and that we don't have to be powerless to be walking into a grocery store far bag of chips and soda and have this kind of horror rain down on us.

But, Ryan, thanks so much for all your time. Take care of yourself. Obviously, we'll check back in with you and we're really thinking about you and all the victims this morning.

BOROWSKI: Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: Will this mass shooting make Congress take any action on gun violence? So we have a Colorado congressman next and more lawmakers coming up next in the show.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: Ten Americans dead this morning after a gunman opened fire at a Colorado grocery store. This is the second mass shooting in the U.S. in less than a week.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado. Congressman, thank you for being with us.

I know you were listening to Ryan Borowski who was in the grocery store yesterday and saw the shooting. And I know you heard him say that he's looking to people like you, looking to lawmakers around the country to do something. He assumes, he says, something must be able to get done to try to at least slow this down. Your response.

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Well, he's right. I mean, he's absolutely right. I'm a lawmaker. I'm a legislature. Ryan and victims and the survivors of these tragedies are always going to have my thoughts. They're always going to have my prayers. But my job is to make laws. My job is to try to make better policy to make people's lives better, to help make people safe and they deserve my action.

And this isn't rocket science either. I mean, one of your prior anchor's said, common sense would tell you that we can do something. But we don't need common sense. We actually know exactly what we need to do. We have been studying this for a long time. There are common sense laws and legislation that we can pass that will help make our communities safer. We just have to get them done. It's that simple.

BERMAN: You actually did. I mean, last week, right? You passed two gun laws, H.R. 8, which expands background checks to private sales and transfers as well, and H.R. 1446, which bans default proceed sales. That's highly specific. That has to do with what's known as the Charleston loophole, which is that if you don't get a response on the instant background check immediately, you don't just go ahead and sell the weapon. You would think that that would not be controversial. The House passed these laws.

Now, I don't know if those laws would prevent or passed the bills, I should say. They're not law because we don't know what the Senate is going to do with them, if anything. I don't know if they would prevent what just happened at the grocery store, but they might prevent other mass shootings in other circumstances, correct?

CROW: Right. Nobody can ever say that any one law or policy is going to prevent a specific shooting. And I've never heard anybody ever say that passing common sense gun violence prevention legislation is going to prevent every shooting and is going to make us perfectly safe. That's not true. But it will make us a lot safer. When we have almost 40,000 Americans die a year because of gun violence, there is a tremendous amount of room for improvement.

And I come at this from a couple different angles. And I'm sitting here -- I'm a father of young children. My kids are staying upstairs sleeping in their bedroom right now. And when they wake up in a couple of hours, I'm going to have to go through that uniquely American parent activity of having to talk to them about yet another mass shooting.

I'm a member of Congress that represents a community that has seen multiple mass shootings from Aurora to Columbine to STEM High School and others. And when people think about these places and say those names, you know, they think of those shootings. I think of those families, those kids, the faces of the parents that I have to console, that I might have to talk to today about this issue.

This is a trauma that our community, my community continues to experience. And every time this happens, we get re-traumatized. Enough is enough.

BERMAN: You brought up the fact that this happens in Colorado, since Littleton, since the Columbine shooting in 1999, you mentioned Columbine, Aurora, STEM High School, there was the Planned Parenthood, there were others too.

[07:25:01]

Why? Why does this seem to happen in Colorado?

CROW: I just don't have the answer to that. I don't think anybody does. My heart is broken. We have a lot of anguish in our community. I just don't know what's going on. You know, what I do know is there are things we can do. I do know that there is action that we can take to try to make our community safer, to make it better for our kids, to try to take some action to stop this, not just in Colorado but nationally that would work.

You know, listen, I'm somebody who grew up, a gun owner and a hunter. You know, I grew up started -- I was hunting since I was 12. I'm a gun owner now. I used to be an Army Ranger. I led 100 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I learned when I was in the army and I learned when I was a hunter that, you know, your rights have responsibilities, that there are duties to citizenship, there are duties to being a neighbor and a productive member of society. And we're failing in those duties right now. So it's time that we step up and start doing what we have to do.

BERMAN: Who is this on in Congress at this point? Look, Mitch McConnell sort of cracked the door open in 2019 when he said he would listen on issues involving red flag laws and maybe expanded background checks. He and the former president kept looking at each other to take first action. Neither did, which is why nothing happened. But who is this on now to get something --

CROW: It's on the Senate. It's on the Senate, right? We passed -- as you said, we passed some common sense legislation in the House. President Biden has said he's looking for common sense legislation. There are things that he would be willing to sign into law today if it was put on his desk. It's sitting in the Senate.

BERMAN: Worth getting rid of the filibuster to pass it?

CROW: Yes.

BERMAN: Congressman Jason Crow, we appreciate your time, as always. Thank you for being with us. Hug your kids when they wake up.

CROW: Thank you. Thanks.

BERMAN: The AstraZeneca vaccine trial results being called into question by U.S. health officials. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us to explain what the heck is going on here, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]