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Breaking News Update: Colorado Shooting, 10 People Dead; Colorado Senator Calls For Federal Action On Gun Control; Aurora Theater 2012 Shooting Survivors Ready To Offer Comfort; Homeland Security Analyst And Ex-Aurora Police Chief On Boulder Mass Shooting; AstraZeneca Stands By U.S. Vaccine Trial Results Amid Concerns Over Data. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 23, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, HOST, CNN NEW DAY: Is what that shooter's motive was.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, HOST, CNN NEW DAY: This mass shooting happened less than a week after the mass shootings in the Atlanta area that left eight people dead.

Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper now calling for federal action on gun control.

But why would we think that Congress would react any differently this time than they have to the dozens of other mornings we've sat here with similar breaking news?

CNN's Dan Simon is live in Boulder with our story. Dan, what have you learned?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Morning, Alisyn. Well, first of all, there were few mass shootings in 2020, perhaps due to the pandemic.

Now we're seeing that trend be quickly reversed with these two mass shootings happening within a week of one another, first in Atlanta, now in Boulder.

Of course, a lot of questions about what happened here. Questions about why the shooter went into that supermarket, started firing seemingly at random.

You had all those witnesses, all those people inside the store trying to run for cover, some jumping off of loading docks trying to get to safety, other people hiding in coat closets on the second level.

I want you to listen now to Ryan Borowski who spoke earlier on NEW DAY.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN BOROWSKI, SURVIVOR OF COLORADO MASS SHOOTING: 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIMON: Boulder authorities scheduled a news conference later this morning where we hope to glean new information about the suspect and the victims.

We do know that this initial investigation will take several days to complete which will include processing the scene, interviewing witnesses, taking a look at any potential surveillance video and trying to gather, of course, as much information as possible about the suspect.

John and Alisyn, I'll send it back to you.

BERMAN: All right, Dan. Dan Simon, please keep us posted. Stand by for more news. Thank you.

Joining us now, Dan Oates. He was the chief of the Aurora police department when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater there in 2012.

Also with us, CNN national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem. She was assistant secretary of intergovernmental affairs at the department of homeland security during the Obama administration.

Dan, I want to start with you. Look, there is so much we don't know this morning. We're waiting to hear from law enforcement in a couple of hours, motive, things like that.

What we do know and what's probably the most important, ten people are dead this morning. Ten people lost their lives in a grocery store, ten families are grieving this morning. An officer with seven children is dead this morning.

You've been through this. You went through this in Aurora. So just tell me what you think people there are feeling, including the police investigating this this morning?

DANIEL OATES, FORMER CHIEF OF POLICE, AURORA COLORADO: Well, if I start with the police. Everybody's been up all night, they're exhausted.

They've got a massive crime scene and they've got unbelievable trauma in their community. They're dealing with the families right now.

I don't even know if they've actually confirmed for the families that their loved ones are deceased and still inside the supermarket. That itself is just horribly traumatic for everyone involved.

And over the days and weeks and months, that community is going to suffer. The funerals, the preparing of the evidence, working the case.

I can tell you, among the cops, they're now completely driven by a desire to make the best possible case and get this guy convicted. If there's anything that they can hold onto as they go through this trauma, it's delivering justice for those families.

And that's got to be their highest concern.

BERMAN: Juliette, as you know, as we all know from having been through this too many times, occasionally people say, oh, you focus too much on the suspect not on the victims.

No, we're trying to find out more about the victims, believe me, this morning. We're getting scant details there.

But one of the reasons in these early stages there is so much focus on the suspect is to make sure more doesn't happen. To understand why it happened to prevent it either from spreading in this very specific case or trying to understand it the next time.

So what are you most focused on this morning?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So like you said, first the victims, their identification. That they are treated with respect, that their families are treated with respect in the process that these families will start and never end in their lifetimes.

The second is, of course, the suspect. I'm looking at motivation, why do people do this? And then weaponry.

So there's motivation and then there's method. And the method here was he had access to what appears to be an assault rifle-type weapon that allowed him to kill ten people relatively quickly.

[08:05:00]

So this was not a question of was there no good response, sometimes no response is fast enough. And so you want to be looking at that.

And then third, of course, when you talk about can we stop it from happening again. I'm not shy on air. We have to look at our gun laws and the sort of permissiveness of our gun culture in America that makes these mass shootings so prevalent, so consistent, so uniquely American.

And then also whether coming out of COVID and the year that Americans have had whether these mass -- whether we shouldn't be concerned about the potential for mass casualty events in the warmer months to come.

And if you're the White House, that's what you have to be concerned about in terms of the threat environment.

BERMAN: Talk a little bit more about that, Juliette, if you will.

KAYYEM: Yes.

BERMAN: Because people should know gun violence in and of itself was actually up during the pandemic.

KAYYEM: Yes.

SHERMAN: But these mass shootings -- which you can identify, you know it when you see it -- and this is something that we see today and we saw last week in Georgia, they seem to have taken something of a break for the last year.

So why would you be concerned that we might see more of them now?

KAYYEM: Well, it is true that the sort of public mass shootings are more prevalent in the last couple of weeks. I should say that CNN and the FBI define a mass shooting as four or more dead. If you take that definition, we've had seven in the last seven days.

But the public nature of the last two that we've been focused on Atlanta and then, of course, Colorado is because of the congregation of people now that we might not have seen six or seven months ago, let alone even one month ago.

The warmer weather is going to bring people out. The opening of movie theaters, schools, sporting events which are always soft targets and always high profile, may bring people out. So that's what I'm looking at in terms of the months ahead.

We always have a threat environment in this country because of soft targets, because of our gun culture which continues to go unabated, unregulated.

And then third, because of the rise of whatever you want to call it, whether it's some ideology or some -- I don't want to say what this might be -- but ideologies that are violent.

BERMAN: Right.

KAYYEM: So that's what I'm looking at. I should say one quick thing. We do not know if the police knew him before. That's what I am looking at right now because that will be relevant to the investigation.

BERMAN: And we may find that out at 10:30.

KAYYEM: Yes.

BERMAN: And that's a huge question right there. Chief, I want to ask you -- and I don't know where you stand on these issues which are political issues but also issues of public safety -- but Chief, if you could change one law, if you could change one law going forward -- I think we're all overwhelmed that we can't change everything -- but if you could change one thing that might prevent this from happening again, what would that be? OATES: Oh, there are so many issues in that regard. I will tell you

this. An AR-15 unleashes ten times the energy into the human body of a handgun. They are incredibly destructive weapons. And in these kinds of events, we see the results.

Another issue is background checks. There seems to be almost universal support in this country for universal background checks and yet we don't have that. So these are areas where reasonable reform is possible.

But I saw Chief Ramsey on earlier, and I think he's right. I think this will be like all the other mass shootings, there'll be lots of prayers offered by our elected officials but nothing of substance will happen with regard to the gun policy issues.

BERMAN: It doesn't have to be though. I just want to -- just so people know. I'm not any more optimistic than you are but it doesn't have to be that way. It is a choice.

It's a choice that Washington seems to keep on making and has made a hundred times in the last 20 years, but it is a choice. And they don't have to keep making it that way.

Juliette Kayyem, Dan Coates (ph), thank you so much for being with us this morning.

OATES: Thank you.

BERMAN: Dan Oates, I should say.

So it's been nearly a decade since another mass shooting in Colorado not far from this one.

Up next, the mother of a young woman who was killed in the Aurora movie theater massacre tells us about her mission to help families coping with tragedy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:10:00]

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

Colorado knows all too well the horror of these massacres.

Thirteen people were killed there in 1999 at Columbine High School. Twelve people shot and killed at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012. And those are just two.

Joining us now is Sandy Phillips. She's the mother of one of those victims from Aurora, 24-year-old Jessica Gowie, an aspiring sports journalist.

Sandy is the co-founder of "Survivors Empowered," and the author of "Tragedy in Aurora: The Culture of Mass Shootings in America." Sandy, thanks so much for being here.

SANDY PHILLIPS, MOTHER OF AURORA, CO SHOOTING VICTIM: Thank you for inviting me. I truly appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: Sandy, the ripple effect of trauma after any mass shooting affects all of us in this country. But, of course, particularly people who have already lived it, like you. What happens in your house when you hear about this mass shooting in Boulder?

PHILLIPS: Well, yesterday when I heard the first part of the news and started reaching out to people that we work closely with on the ground in Colorado, getting tidbits of information, you go into that fight mode immediately. At least I do.

It took about an hour for me to really kind of feel again -- and, of course, you always go back to the phone call that you received.

And then you realize that there are so many of us survivors out there that are suffering again, being retraumatized again by this story.

So I went right into work mode and tried to practice my mindfulness yesterday, somewhat successfully.

[08:15:08]

And moved forward as best I can because, right now, we're focused on the survivors and their needs.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And I know that COVID is complicating that. What you'd normally do to go and comfort people, you cannot do right now.

PHILLIPS: Exactly. We normally -- normally we would already be on the scene. And working with police chiefs like Dan Oats who has become a dear friend and politicians like Jason Crow who also understands trauma and the trauma to gun violence survivors in this country.

So we're not able to do that. So we have to do the best we can through phone calls and outreach and zoom calls. So -- and it doesn't stop us. It just slows us down a bit.

CAMEROTA: You know, I talked about some of the other horrific mass shootings in Colorado. Obviously, Columbine, 1999. Aurora, where you lost your daughter, 2012. Planned Parenthood, 2015. Walmart, 2017. There was a STEM high school as well.

Is there something particular going wrong in Colorado, or could this be any state?

PHILLIPS: You know, it could be any state, unfortunately. This is not an issue of what's wrong in Colorado. And by the way, you left out Chuck E. Cheese which happened before Aurora and I believe after Columbine.

So, they do have a slew of this disease happening in Colorado, but as William Hurd (ph) said earlier, we have mass shootings in slow motion every day in this country in other neighborhoods that never get the press, that never get the opportunity to speak out about what's happening in their communities.

And we need to change that. This is not an issue of mental health. We have mental -- the same amount of mentally ill in every country. It doesn't vary much.

And the difference in America is that we have the easy access to guns. And we have to stop that. We have to make it more difficult for people that are going to own guns to be responsible gun owners and define what responsible gun ownership is.

CAMEROTA: Yeah. And, Sandy, last month, before these two recent mass shootings, you tweeted a message to President Biden, and I just want to read it because you were ahead of this. You saw something on the horizon because I guess it's always on the horizon.

So, here's what you said to President Biden. We know that you've been busy, but we really need to save lives. This is survivors of gun violence week. Our numbers are higher than ever before and growing. Please appoint a gun czar task force and pass common-sense gun laws to address this public health and safety issue.

Do it for my daughter and all survivors who know this pain. Your son Beau thanked us for our work. Complete that work for her, for Beau, for America. My only daughter, Jessica, was brutally shot six times. The last bullet hit her in the head and left a five-inch hole in her left eye and brain.

Do you know if that got his attention?

PHILLIPS: Evidently not. I've written to the White House several times and made several calls and we still have not had a meeting. And I do understand he's busy. But this is his opportunity. This is his one chance to stand up and say -- and show us his plan to end gun violence in this country.

This is his time. And I'm hoping and praying that he will stand up and show us what his plan is and get it moving. We have to end the filibuster if we're going to do anything on gun violence prevention. It has to be done now. It cannot wait.

CAMEROTA: Yeah. Sandy Phillips, we really appreciate your time and all of the energy that you put into this for victims and for all of us everywhere.

Thank you, and we will speak to you again.

PHILLIPS: Thank you so much for the invitation.

CAMEROTA: AstraZeneca is pushing back over concerns from U.S. health officials about the data for their U.S. vaccine trial. We'll you what has the medical authorities worried this morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:23:26]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Happening now, we're getting new developments over the last several minutes surrounding AstraZeneca and its claims about its coronavirus vaccine which they said just yesterday was safe and effective. Overnight, a highly unusual statement from U.S. health officials saying the company, quote, may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.

Now a few minutes ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci had this to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: It really is unfortunate that this happened. This is really what you call an unforced error because the fact is, this is very likely a very good vaccine. And this kind of thing does, as you say, do nothing but really casts some doubt about the vaccines and maybe contribute to the hesitancy.

It was not necessary. If you look at it the data really are quite good, but when they put it into the press release, it wasn't completely accurate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. That was Fauci just a few minutes ago. Also a few minutes ago, AstraZeneca put out this statement. I'm going to read it to you. The numbers published yesterday were based on a pre-specified interim analysis with a data cutoff of 17 February. We've reviewed the preliminary assessment of the primary analysis and the results were consistent with the interim analysis.

We're now completing the validation of the statistical analysis. We'll now engage with the immediate data safety monitoring board to share our primary analysis with the most up-to-date efficacy data. We intend to issue results of the primary analysis within 48 hours.

Joining us now, chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, that's a word salad of interim, preliminary and this, that and the other thing there.

[08:25:04]

But it seems to be --

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- some kind of admission that there is something unusual about the data. Explain that to us.

GUPTA: Yeah, so it is still confusing, to be honest with you. So they had a cut-off date of February 17th, and they say that they presented data up until that point, it sounds like. Sounds like there was other data that was collected after that or they needed to do an analysis of more data.

Word salad is right. I'm still not exactly sure what they mean. What I can tell you, when we looked at the data, and we can only go based on what they have given us so far, we know ultimately that the FDA would review this data if and when an emergency use authorization is applied for. But what we can tell you is that it seemed rather small in terms of the overall data set.

Let me show you by comparison. When we looked at the Pfizer data back last year, basically trying to figure out how many got sick in the placebo group versus how many got sick in the vaccinated group. You can see the numbers there. 162 people became symptomatic. That's how they get at 95 percent efficacy.

Moderna, smaller numbers but similar proportion. 90 in the Placebo group became ill versus 5 in the vaccine group. What we've seen so far and I think it is incomplete. It must be incomplete data with the AstraZeneca vaccine is that five people became symptomatic in the placebo group and nobody in the vaccinated group. We don't know what that means.

Was that severe illness, was that moderate illness, all illness? It's -- I think that's part of the incomplete data and how does that jive with the 79 percent data -- 79 percent efficacy that they're putting out there. So the numbers and the data don't quite match up. They say that they're going to resolve this within the next 48 hours.

We'll see. We'll see. I mean, we're going to look closely at this. And more importantly, the FDA will look closely at this if an emergency use authorization is applied.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, do we need the AstraZeneca vaccine here in the U.S., or do we have enough with Moderna and Pfizer?

GUPTA: I think we probably have enough with Moderna and Pfizer. When we look at those doses, there's some 300 million doses of each of those that have been purchased. Now they won't all sort of arrive until sort of July time frame. So, you know, it's going to do a little bit of time. But, still, I think overall the numbers are going to be adequate for the United States.

There's also the Johnson & Johnson vaccine out there. The production numbers on those seem to be slower than expected. They released 4 million doses of that right when the authorization was received. And they've given another 1.2 million doses so far.

They were supposed to get to 20 million doses by the end of this month. So they have still close to 15 million doses they have to release. What we hear from the manufacturers there is that the fill and finish, the last step of the vaccine production process, is under way and happening. They just need to get the sign off, they say, from the FDA to start shipping those doses.

But nevertheless, you're right. We don't necessarily need the AstraZeneca vaccine in this country, but many countries around the world are dependent on it. BERMAN: I would say that you get the sense from federal officials

that they do not think there will be a supply problem in the U.S. for the vaccine. They really think that in terms of supply, we are getting there or there, and that, you know, people as young as Alisyn Camerota are getting vaccinated now.

CAMEROTA: Teenagers.

BERMAN: Teenagers practically, getting vaccinated. They're opening up to more and more people.

So the supply is there. But I'm curious when they think that the demand will be the problem, if there is a tipping point date where they are concerned they'll have the supply but not enough people wanting it.

GUPTA: Yeah, that's, I think, the critical question. This vaccine because of the supply starts to outstrip the demand or people just have this vaccine fade. Hey, things are going in the right direction. Do I need to get the vaccine?

I think they anticipate that time frame to be sort of beginning of may. And I think it's, in part, what sort of unformed this idea that, by May 1st, they are saying they'll basically open up the criteria for anybody who is eligible for the vaccine to be able to get it.

So I think that they were anticipating that the inflection point between supply and demand would change around that time and they'll make sure that people continued to go out and get the vaccine, even if they felt like things were in much better shape in the country.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you very much.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam is sharing her experience in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

And Stephanie joins us live now from Los Angeles.

So, how did it go, Stephanie?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It went great, Alisyn. I finally find out whether I got the placebo or the vaccine, which you'll see her. But the other thing I've learned while covering this is that we always talk about people of color and their fear of vaccines. I wanted to know why. We always hear Tuskegee and big high-profile cases like that.