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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Rep. Robert Garcia, (D-CA), Is Interviewed About House Democrats Ask Kimberly Guilfoyle For Records Related To Alleged Pay- To-Play Scheme; School District: Active Shooter Reported At Elementary School In Bend, Oregon; Police: Multiple Victims, Suspected Shooter Is Dead. Aired 5-6p ET
Aired October 15, 2026 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Thanks to my panel. Thanks to you at home for watching as well. "The Lead" anchored by Pamela Brown starts right now.
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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: And welcome to The Lead. I'm Pamela Brown in for Jake Tapper. And we start in our Politics Lead. Just 19 days until the midterm elections and we're tracking the key races that could shift control of Congress to Democrats. Many Republicans are now in panic mode as once safe seats appear to be in danger, much of it thanks to President Donald Trump's unpopular Iran war and the affordability crisis.
The latest Fox News poll shows Trump's approval rating dropped to 36 percent, his lowest ever in that same poll. One key battleground race we're watching today, the Michigan Senate race where today Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is campaigning with progressive Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They're kicking off a two-day swing through the state's largely Republican Upper Peninsula.
This is a tight race. El-Sayed needs to cut into some Republican support to beat his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. And Rogers today just announced plans for a seven figure ad buy to promote his closing message here in the final weeks. Today, President Donald Trump stepped in for Rogers attacking El-Sayed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: His name is Abdul, but I think I call him Mohammed Abdul El-Sayed. And he's a Muslim Brotherhood guy, 100 percent. One hundred percent, He's a Muslim Brotherhood guy.
How about having him be on the Senate Intelligence Committee? How about that? The guy's 100 percent Muslim Brotherhood. And we've got to make sure that Mike Rogers wins in central casting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: CNN's Gloria Pazmino has been at today's events with El-Sayed and Ocasio-Cortez.
Gloria, what is their message and how are voters in these Republican areas responding?
GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the last few minutes, people have been asking questions about unions, about the cost of food, about student loan interest and that is what they're hoping to do throughout these campaign stops during the day today. Both Abdul El-Sayed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing this swing through Michigan's Upper Peninsula. And as you mentioned, this is very much Trump country. But they're hoping to just break a little bit of support. They are trying to reach out to voters in what is has been historically a reliable Republican part of the -- of the state.
Now I also talked to some voters earlier this morning and they've told me the same thing, that they're worried about gas prices. They're very worried about the trade war with Canada, Canada being a major trading partner here. And they're worried about gas prices, gas prices a huge issue for voters here.
I spoke to at least one El-Sayed voter who told me that he is ready to support him, while I met others who were just not ready to make up their minds just yet. Now, even though this is a reliably red part of the state, we have heard just in the last minutes from the congresswoman actually reaching out directly to those Republicans. She said that she hopes that there are Republicans here in this room today. She thanked them for being here. She said, I hope that you can keep an open ear to what we have to say.
So I think that's interesting because I think, you know, speaking to their campaigns, that is very much the point of them being here. They want to campaign in these areas where Trump's populist message has been popular in the past. They're hoping their popular message -- populist message can actually bring in some of those votes. So we'll see how they do in this Upper Peninsula swing through Michigan, which is going to take us all around the state today.
BROWN: All right, our thanks to Gloria Pazmino there.
And joining us now is Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia of California. He is the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee.
Congressman, if Democrats take back the House and you accept the role of chair of the House Oversight Committee, Democrats already prepared for some investigations into Trump and his administration. But many Republicans accused Democrats of targeting the president solely for political retribution. And as you know, many Democrats say right now that's what Trump is doing as well. How do you convince voters these investigations would be about genuine accountability?
REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA): I think the American public are very aware of the enormous amount of corruption that is happening right now out of the White House. I mean, Donald Trump is the most corrupt person to ever serve as president. You have a crypto scheme that, of course, there's no checks and balances. You have the president's son getting -- wedding's paid for by Russian oligarchs. You have Jared Kushner who's getting $2 billion from the Saudis with no official role in the White House, trying to buy private islands.
[17:05:15]
You have the stock trading that's coming out of the White House. You have Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was obviously engaged to Don Jr., getting $100,000 to pay off a credit card bill. I mean, the amount of corruption is staggering. And I think the American public want there to be checks and balances. And so we are committed to ensuring that we get justice for anyone that has wronged the American public.
And at the top of that list is the Trump family.
BROWN: All right, let's dig a little bit deeper into some of the stuff you said. First of all, let's talk about the former U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, calling for a potential investigation into Guilfoyle. She resigned this week following the allegations that she demanded $100,000 from a GOP donor in exchange for access to senior Trump officials. She denies these allegations, she says, and her lawyers say was payments for consulting and speeches. Do Republicans on your committee support this investigation, and what can you compel her to do at this point?
GARCIA: Well, no Republicans are coming out in favor yet, but we hope they do. We welcome them to. I mean, look, the former ambassador herself tried to pass off, apparently, these text messages that we've all seen with our very own eyes, we've read these messages, as AI generated. I mean, you have the person that is the donor himself coming out and talking to the public and the media and making these very serious allegations. And so there's no question that we need to investigate this.
I mean, Donald Trump himself threw her under the bus, claiming somehow that he didn't know her very well, which is obviously a complete lie. And so the idea that we have someone coming in to be an ambassador to our country to represent an -- to represent, really, the United States with an important ally in the region especially, and that person is communicating with donors to get credit cards paid, that's pretty serious corruption. So we have got to investigate that. And Republicans should join us in those calls.
And by the way, she is now claiming, oh, well, you know, she's a private citizen, and so she somehow thinks these investigations will end. She's highly mistaken, and these investigations will continue.
BROWN: So what exactly are you doing now on this front?
GARCIA: So we have asked her a series of questions. We are asking for financial records. We've actually, as the Oversight Committee, personally now interviewed the donor in question that has obviously been out in the public, have asked him a series of questions that has given us even more questions to ask of her and others. And we want to understand, was she involved in any sort of promises being made to other individuals? There are reports out there, there are allegations that she was involved in some other business deals with other people in Greece and those that had business in front of their government.
So this is all pretty serious. We can't have folks that are engaged in diplomacy involved in this level of blatant corruption, especially one that was so engaged and close to the Trump family. She was someone that was highly involved in that inner circle of the president and his family. And so we have these important questions to ask.
BROWN: I'm wondering, you mentioned the White House and President Trump profiting off of stock and so forth on decisions that he's been involved with. Of course, the White House says that he hasn't been involved in the stock trades and so forth. That's what they say. But as a member of Congress, members of Congress are also involved in a lot of issues that they're able to trade stocks on. I know they have to disclose it, just as the president does.
Do you think there should be more regulation around Congress members being able to trade stocks on issues that they're working on?
GARCIA: Not only should there be regulations, members of Congress should not be allowed to trade stocks, period. And I am an author of that bill. I do not trade stocks in the Congress. Members of Congress shouldn't be trading on any information available to them. And that should be one of the first laws that we put in front of this new Congress when we win in November.
The American public expect their government officials to actually represent them, not moneyed interests, not trading on information. And certainly the president shouldn't be doing it, nor should members of Congress, but the level of corruption that is happening out of the White House is above and beyond the stock trading. I mean, you're talking about a president that is billions of dollars with a B richer. And that is not just because of stock trading. It's because of these massive crypto schemes and crypto deals where you're having possibly foreign governments or oligarchs dumping in unlimited amounts of money into these stablecoins.
And we have no idea how to actually see who's giving money. And that is a huge problem that's got to get fixed in the Congress.
BROWN: Just tell us a little bit more. You call it crypto schemes, these oligarchs. What more evidence do you have about these oligarchs pouring all this money in there and what you plan to do about it as a member of the Oversight Committee?
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GARCIA: With the limited information that we already have about who is actually investing in these coins and crypto programs that the president is putting forward, we do know that there are numerous large businessmen, people tied with foreign governments that are pouring in money into these coins. And remember, there's no real map -- there's no real reporting system in place. And so a vast majority of the money that's coming in we actually can't see and don't really know who is a part of these financial groups that are pouring these huge amounts of money. They're being basically going directly to the president and his crypto schemes. He has -- he -- and he has more than one of these actual crypto programs in place.
What we do know is that the president is making billions of dollars and his family off of this. And it's unprecedented in American history. No American president has ever done anything close to like this. And so this has to be investigated. There has to be transparency.
And quite frankly, there has (inaudible) that no president, no member of Congress, no one in government should be allowed to benefit from any type of crypto or coin scheme in --
BROWN: All right. Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia of California, thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.
BROWN: I'm going to get to this breaking news in our National Lead. An active shooter has been reported at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon. Officials there say the school was placed on lockdown. CNN's Leigh Waldman is with us now.
What details are you learning, Leigh?
LEIGH WALDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, it's good to be with you. We're monitoring this very active situation now. Less than an hour ago, we heard from Bend Police Department there in Oregon announcing that there was an active shooter and also announcing a reunification center not far away from the elementary school.
Silver Rail Elementary School is where this is all happening at. We've heard from the school district as well. They also confirmed that there is an active shooter situation. Police are going to be hosting a news conference in a matter of minutes to update those concerned families in the area who are watching these updates as they come in and providing more information.
At this point, we have no information on any casualties, any injuries that might have happened at this elementary school. But we do know that there is a confirmed active shooter at this elementary school in Bend, Oregon and a reunification center that has already been set up for parents and families to go to receive more information to wait for their loved ones at that elementary school. We're hoping to get any kind of information from police right now. We've been calling businesses in the area, calling officials in the area, hoping to get any kind of information. But all we're hearing at this point is this is an extremely active situation that's all unfolding at an elementary school surrounded by neighborhoods and businesses there in Bend, Oregon, Pamela.
BROWN: Just any parents worst nightmare right here. Leigh Waldman, stay with us.
Our law enforcement experts are here now. Juliette, what's going through your mind right now? I know there's very little details coming in, but what's on your mind? What do you want to know?
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I mean, obviously we don't know the extent of it. I'll tell you, I got a phone call from us, from CNN, a couple hours ago, no one could quite tell what it was. So this has been a couple hours without any information coming out. So we are obviously going to wait. But it's also clear that they have not reopened the school, they have not reopened the neighborhood.
They are still on lockdown could mean a number of things. So first thing I'm looking at is family notification and reunification is the most important thing. In active school shootings, you want to get kids that are safe home with their terrified parents. Unfortunately, we have this down to an art form in this country. And so most schools in this case, I believe that they -- that there's a church or a religious facility nearby where there'll be family unification.
Most important thing is are we done with the -- with the active shooter part and now in recovery? We've got nothing on that yet. And so -- but it's been a couple hours now since that first call.
BROWN: Yes. And again, the police there are supposed to be holding a press conference very soon. Of course, we'll be covering that when that happens. We're waiting for more information.
But Josh, as we wait for that information, you know, you train people on how to respond to active shooters. What strikes you about the situation so far?
JOSH SCHIRARD, DIRECTOR, BYRNA LAW ENFORCEMENT: You know, the -- Juliette commented on the link that we've been waiting and waiting to hear more information. What people don't realize is while the active shooter generally happens very, very quickly, the shooting starts very quickly. The response is generally one to three minutes for law enforcement. And getting in there and just neutralizing the shooter, if that's what they're doing, is only a very small part of what goes into an active shooter.
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When I commanded the active shooter in Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas here years ago, we were on premise for about six to seven hours before we could actually render that school clear. We had the initial clearing, we had a secondary clearing for victims, for IEDs. And it took a long time to make sure that we knew that school was safe before we can start letting investigators back in. So there's a lot of layers that go into making sure that this place is safe and that we can start, you know, getting investigators in, we can start identifying people in that school. So it's a very long process.
And people need to understand that law enforcement is going to release information as they can, especially when it comes to reunification and family notification. But unfortunately, there's just -- we have to be diligent and vigilant about what goes on here.
BROWN: You know, I know my kids at their school, they go through drills. It's not called active shooter drills. You don't want to scare the kids. But tell us more, Josh, about just what happens in a situation like this. As Juliette said, you know, unfortunately in this country, it's down to an art form now in terms of what schools are supposed to do when there's an active shooter.
SCHIRARD: So the accepted model with active shooter response for civilians is run, hide, fight. We've done a great job last 15, 20 years of really educating the civilian population, students, parents, not just in schools, but in businesses and commercial spaces alike about that moniker, about that system, run, hide, fight.
If you think that something's wrong, if you think there may be a shooter, or any kind of attack for that matter, get out of there, get away as fast as you can, even if you think it may only be remotely safe. Your chances of surviving an incident like this, if you can separate yourself, are so much greater than if you're stuck there. Now, if you can't, and you can't safely do that, you need to hide. You need to make yourself a very hard target.
We have seen time and time again that the shooter goes in here, understanding they are on a very short clock. They have a very limited window to inflict as much damage as they're trying to do. So they're going to bypass locked doors, they're going to bypass harder to reach places. If they don't think that they're going to be able to get to somebody, they're going to keep going until they can't. So hiding, barricading yourself is such a powerful tool.
And then last resort, you have to be willing to fight back. Once again, in so many of these instances, we see that these shooters, these attackers have planned this. They've gone through this scenario a thousand times in their head. And any kind of resistance, any kind of wrench in their, what we call their OODA loop, is sometimes enough to get them to disengage the attack and run the other way. So all of these things are being taught in these schools and in many spaces when it comes to the civilian population.
And they work. We see it time and time again. If you follow the system, it absolutely works and saves lives.
BROWN: And as we've been talking about, this has been going on -- oh, go ahead, Juliette.
KAYYEM: No, I want to pick up on what Josh said. This is, you know, it's controversial, but Josh, you know, is right. This is an elementary school where there's going to be no pushback. The sole goal of the teachers is obviously to protect the children. But you know, there is -- if shooters can be distracted, if they can be, you know, moved away, we saw this at the synagogue -- at a synagogue shooting recently, you can just buy time.
And that's all essentially that is going on is you just want to buy time to be able to protect young children who may not -- we don't know how young some of these children are, but elementary school is pretty young. They would not be able to run as quickly. They certainly wouldn't be able to fight. So a lot of the training goes to teachers and administrators. As we saw at a synagogue recently, I think they were custodial staff.
It's the adults in the room. So we're going to have to wait in terms of what the police know now and what they're telling the public versus what they obviously want to tell the families first. And hopefully it's just unification and nothing works, right? They just want to get these kids with their parents.
BROWN: Yes. These are the youngest and most vulnerable --
KAYYEM: Yes.
BROWN: -- among us.
Just to reset for our audience, this is what we know from the Bend Police Department. They tweeted, quote, "The Bend Police Department is currently at Silver Rail Elementary School after a report of an active shooter. There is a large police presence in the area. Please avoid the area. We will share more information as soon as we can."
We are expecting to hear from police soon in this press conference. Presumably, Juliette, given the fact this has been going on for hours, if this was still an active situation, they wouldn't be having a press conference one would think?
KAYYEM: Right. I mean, as Josh was saying, you know, the horror tends to be -- I mean, Uvalde in Texas was such a -- was, you know, so frightening for and horrible for everyone because no one could quite understand why is this taking so long, that incident. Most active shooter responses are very, very quick.
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Not quick enough. Obviously, you want to prevent anyone from getting into one of these schools. So it may be that this is a preliminary press conference. Just give us a sense of the sense, the sense that everyone who's watching this or has family there or who just worries about our kids in these environments with so many guns is -- was this -- did this have any success? Was there -- are there fatalities to speak of?
And they may not have all the information yet, but at least they can be do some ground setting at this stage or some level setting at this stage to determine whether we're looking at a mass shooting event four or more or not.
And I just -- you know, the police sending a tweet out like that, they know what that means. I mean they know that that means that they're not going to keep that tweet up for this many hours unless there was a situation that was something that they needed to be able to address, eliminate, and then confront a community that is just waiting on pins and needles about what's happening there.
BROWN: Yes, it's been about an hour and a half now at this point. All right, we're standing by --
KAYYEM: Yes.
BROWN: -- for this news conference from authorities in Bend, Oregon. Everyone stand by. We're back in just a moment.
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BROWN: All right. Authorities are now updating the situation in Bend, Oregon. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHEILA MILLER, COMMUNICATION MANAGER, BEND POLICE DEPARTMENT: -- M-I- L-L-E-R. I am the communications manager for the Bend Police Department, and I'm here today to share a little bit more about the incident that took place today at Silver Rail Elementary School.
First, I want to say we're thinking of everybody in this community and we care really deeply and are -- will be here through this whole process.
So for your information, at about 12:59 p.m. dispatch received the first call reporting a shot fired into a car. At 1:00 p.m. our officers -- dispatch toned out an alert which alerts all of our officers that they need to respond to a critical scene.
Our officers were on scene at approximately 1:02 p.m. Seconds later, we received word over the radio that the suspect in this incident was down. We received multiple 911 calls during this incident just in those two minutes reporting an active shooter in Silver Rail elementary school.
At 1:02, as I said, our officers were on the scene and moments later, the shooter had been shot and killed. We do not know. We don't have confirmation yet who shot the suspect. It may have been a bystander. At this time, we have multiple victims.
We transported Bend medics, Bend police and Fire. Obviously, there's hundreds of us on scene. Bend medics from Bend Fire responded and transported at least two people to St. Charles. We do not know their status.
The victims include --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm supporting Brian (ph) --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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BROWN: All right, so let's bring back our law enforcement experts in light of that information we just got there from a Bend Police Department official. You heard her say that there are multiple victims at this time. This all happened very quickly. Josh, you were saying earlier these things do. 12:59 p.m. they got the first call to dispatch that shots were fired into a car. At 1:00 p.m., just a minute later, the alert went out to all the officers. By 1:02 p.m. officers responded on scene. Seconds later, that shooter was shot and killed, according to the official there.
Juliette, what do you make of what we just heard?
KAYYEM: I mean, we're still assessing it. There's -- I've been doing this a long time. There wasn't a large police presence at the press conference. It did not sound like -- not even clear that there was a entry into the school. We don't know if the two people who were taken, they were described as people and not children.
So there may have been something outside the school that caused this series of events. And in fact, the perpetrator appears to have been shot, she said, not by just a bystander, so there might have been a police presence already there.
I will say they would have been very, very careful about what they were disclosing. And in this world in which we're just desperate for good news, I think that whether there was a lockdown or whoever shot the perpetrator, it appears that something that could have been very bad was not as bad. And that is, I guess, that's good news in this day and age.
BROWN: Yes. No, absolutely. So she said two of them were taken to St. Charles, which is a Level 2 trauma center in Bend. Of course, we wish them -- we wish them well. We don't know anything more about the victims here in this case, but it sounds like this happened based on what she said, this was going on outside with a car, Josh.
Again, you do active shooter trainings, what strikes you about what we've heard so far?
SCHIRARD: What we know so far it sounds like the law enforcement response was absolutely what we would expect and absolutely the standard that we've trained for, you know, for years and decades here in the U.S. You know, the -- whether they were already on campus or not, we're not sure if they have, you know, SRO school resource officers that are -- that are on campus or assigned to the school, or if these were local police, sheriff's office, or municipal police that actually responded. But obviously they were on scene very, very quickly. They drove straight to the threat, regardless of how many were there, who was there, and they neutralized that threat. They stopped the killing, which is exactly what they're trained to do.
And it sounds now like that's what we're seeing here.
Now, Juliette brought up a lot of good questions. You know, who are these victims? Are they adults? Are they children? How far did he penetrate into school, if at all?
You know, many of these schools have very secure man trap systems to where you may be able to get in the front doors, but you can't get past the office. And, you know, so there's a lot of questions that are still yet to be answered. But I commend the police department and the city for coming forth with this information, even in what this would be considered an early stage, just to make sure that the community understands that they're not at risk, there's no longer a threat, and they were able to take care of it. And moving forward, I'm sure we'll get a lot more information and a lot more answers.
KAYYEM: Yes.
BROWN: Yes, typically, as you well know, Juliette, when the suspect is killed, we're able to get more information because there's not going to be a prosecution, obviously. What signs are you looking for from law enforcement as we try to piece together what happened here?
KAYYEM: Yes. I mean, this is the kind of -- this is going to now look very familiar in terms of the kind of investigation we would anticipate. They know who he is, they know who his family is. They probably have a car, if there's a car that he was in. So his identity is known.
So there'll be a physical search of the home, a digital search of sort of what was the cause of this? Obviously a relationship search. We know in a lot of these school shootings, either it's a former student 20 years later deciding that it's the school or someone at the school, as we've seen in some of these cases.
I just -- I really, you know, do want to amplify the great points by Josh that, like Uvalde sort of got it in everyone's heads that we can't trust police because it was so horrible. And one of the, you know, aspects of the kind of world we live in is that in many instances, law enforcement is just trained so well. They get that alert, they're not even thinking, and they are, you know, either shooting at someone who is the suspect or locking down the students. Uvalde has had -- was horrible for the community, but also has had ripple effects in terms of confidence in law enforcement. And this is what people should also see is that this is how law enforcement is trained and it's what we should expect them to do in instances --
[17:30:06]
BROWN: Yes, and I just want to jump in really quick because I'm getting in my ear. This is a part we didn't have from this public information officer. Children are among the injured. We are being told that children are among the injured. So some sad information there. We're still waiting to learn more. In terms of the gender of the suspect, we don't know if it is a male or female. Typically, Josh, as you well know, it is a male. We don't have any indications right now. Give us the profile of a typical male shooter, Josh, and what this tells you that children are among the injured, according to this official.
SCHIRARD: You know, we've been trying to answer that question for the last 25 years, really since 1999 and the Columbine shooting is how do we identify what are these traits? What can we see before this happens to help us, you know, get to these problem and get to these issues before they happen? And many times, Juliette kind of hit on it too. We've seen, you know, current students. We've seen, you know, prior students where it's years later. This could also be an administrator, a prior teacher with some other unfortunate, you know, issue with another administrator or teacher.
This could have been a random person that was just realizes that elementary schools in the U.S. are a very, very soft target, both -- and how they're fortified and two, in our own hearts, how soft they are and how much they can affect the safety and the overall sanity of a community when you do damage like that. So, you know, it's really, really difficult to really pare down those traits that we see across the board, because unfortunately, we see too many of these and they have so many different variables that go into them, depending on geographical location and time and all the different things that can go into a shooting like this.
So it's really imperative on us as a law enforcement industry and as a community, as soon as we start getting confirmed information to start taking a look and seeing what parts of that information that we can use right now to make sure we are doing everything we can to provide a safe community for our kids and for the rest of our families out there. And then as we move forward and as we start learning more, like Juliette said, we start getting search warrants. We start learning the whys behind everything, continue to develop and evolve that theory and that practice and those TT, what we call TTPs, about how we can make sure and better respond to this in the future.
BROWN: All right, you guys stand by. I want to go back to Leigh Waldman, who's getting a bit more information from authorities there in Bend, Oregon. What have you learned, Leigh?
WALDMAN: Well, Pamela, at this point, like you mentioned, children are among those who have been injured in this shooting that happened at a Bend, Oregon elementary school. The police at this point aren't saying much about the suspected shooter who was shot and killed, but they're also not saying by who at this point. We don't know if it's by a bystander or one of the responding officers there. That's a question we have outstanding to the Bend Police Department. But we know that children are among those who are injured.
They're not telling us any information about the type of gun that was used at this point. We're also waiting for a little bit more clarity at this point. We heard them say something about someone being down inside of the school. We're waiting to hear more clarification on who exactly that is, if that's a suspect, if they were just at the school or inside of the school. Police have promised a press release will be coming soon with all of that information. They laid out in that very brief press conference a little more than an hour after the shooting happened at this elementary school there in Bend, Oregon.
They also promised that they're going to have another press conference for us later on today. We know that two people were taken to a nearby hospital, St. Charles Hospital, in the area. That reunification center, Journey Church, it's not far away from that school there. That's being set up for parents to go to, to be reunited with their loved ones after what can only be described as a horrific and absolutely gut-wrenching, unimaginable day for these families, Pamela. Lots of questions, but we're working to get you those answers. Taking a look at the neighborhood, it is a neighborhood surrounding this school. There's businesses that we've been making calls to there just to try and paint a picture for you all for what this community actually looks like. We've seen images from our affiliates in the area showing parents waiting for their children, waiting for their loved ones outside of that school. So this is a very heartbreaking situation.
BROWN: And I heard in my ear something about, we have some video actually to show a little bit of that. Here's school buses here as part of the school. This is a school that, it's a public elementary school. It had 457 students in the 2024-2025 school year, kindergarten through fifth grade. And as we've been noting, Leigh, children are among the injured, according to officials there. We hope to learn more about how many, what those injuries look like, what actually happened here. So Leigh, stay with us as you get more information.
[17:35:13]
We want to go back to our law enforcement experts. We have a new expert with us, Jason Pack. He's a retired FBI supervisory special agent. He also served as an EMT and active first responder. Jason, I've known you for a long time, all your years in the FBI. What do you make of all of this?
JASON PACK, RETIRED FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: Well, you and I have been on many a crisis scene like this, but this call is the absolute worst call you can get as a first responder. We heard that Bend public information officer, say the alert was put out over the radio. People know that's going to be a hot call that's going to follow that. But just to hear that an active shooter was at an elementary school is very sobering for a second, but then you just focus, you get to the scene and then eliminate the threat as Josh and Juliette have been talking about.
So now that question is why, right? And there's really no logical answer to this, but law enforcement will have to piece this timeline together, start interviewing witnesses and putting this whole case together to try to find that answer.
BROWN: Yes. And we're starting to learn more about this school. I know a lot of schools have beefed up their security, right, especially after Uvalde and all the lessons learned from that. Sadly, schools have put in magnetometers, they have more security guards. We don't know about this school and what kind of security apparatus it had, but the fact that it was three minutes from what we were told, from the minute that call came in to the suspect being shot and killed, Juliette, that's something right there.
KAYYEM: Yes. And the average is anywhere from three to four minutes. And once again, as I was saying earlier, like, you know, we have it -- Uvalde was horrible for 10,000 reasons, but one is I think it, you know, it deprived people of some confidence in what most law enforcement knows what to do, which is your timeline is very short for response and they know it, because a lot of damage can be done. And it's not just physical damage. I mean, you know, when we talk about these things in terms of their consequences, in terms of who's in the hospital or who may be dead, but, you know, this will have a ripple effect for years. And goodness knows how long for young children who may have experienced this. So three minutes is great and three minutes is what we should expect of our law enforcement. And we don't know simply, I mean, the question we have is how much into the building did the shooter get at this stage?
But we've had no confirmed fatalities, no reporting of confirmed fatalities, and the shooter is dead. So in the world in which you're assessing, you know, was this good or bad? Is this all bad? But is this better than it might've been? Certainly at least from what we're getting from public statements, I think yes, at this stage. And so, and then, you know, every couple of days, this will, unfortunately, some sort of mass shooting will occur.
BROWN: In these situations, you just feel so hopeless as you just look at what happened. You're getting this trickle of information. It's just heart-wrenching. And elected officials from Oregon, they are now tweeting out U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley represents Oregon. He tweeted, "My team and I are closely monitoring reports of an active shooter situation at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend. As details continue to come out, my heart is with the Bend community and all of the students and families affected. No one should have to fear violence at school."
And Jason, it's been made clear by the official there on the ground that the shooter was killed, but law enforcement also has to make sure that there weren't any co-conspirators or anyone else involved, right?
PACK: Absolutely. And they'll be going looking at that video, security video from inside and outside. They'll be trying to piece together any video that is adjacent to the school to kind of check that person's path to see if anybody else was with them. They'll do that digital scrub that Juliette was talking about earlier in Josh and look for any kind of associates and just try to piece together a little bit more of the story about what happened before this shooting.
BROWN: Juliette, walk us through. And again, this is like deja vu. So sadly in this country, all the shootings we've had, I mean, just this year, there have been at least 46 school shootings in the U.S. just this year as of October 2nd, 15 were on a college campus, 31 were on K through 12 school grounds that left 27 people dead and 40 other victims injured. This is according to CNN's analysis. Walk us through what happens from here. We're at the point now that, you know, police held, it was just one person held a press conference. What goes on now?
[17:39:58]
KAYYEM: OK. So there's going to be two pieces. I think it's important that we focus on both because the data you just gave it for Americans listening to that were unfortunately sort of used to those kinds of numbers to, this is such a particular American phenomenon, the idea of mass shootings because of our gun laws, because of our gun culture and gun permissiveness. And I think that sense of sort of, we're always going to have to be on defense. And I think it's important to just, you know, sort of put, put the United States in context of the global, you know, what other countries are experiencing.
So there's going to be the investigator. They know who he is. They know where he lives. I mean, this is happening so fast. Now he's dead. He's got a car there. Presumably he's has a family. He has a place where he was. So you'll have the physical investigation, the digital footprint. Was he in touch with people? Was he radicalized? Was he lonely? Did he have an affiliation with the school somehow? And was he in contact with others? All of those questions that is going to be fast. I mean, the -- we're not on a manhunt now. This is now they know exactly who it is.
And sometimes the reason is just really not conclusive. And sometimes, you know, it's, you just simply don't know. The other piece that is important for us to remember, and it's what, you know, those of us in crisis management look at, which is the harm to societies and to communities when this thing happens. And these are, you know, there's lots of data out there about these, you know, longitudinal studies, but basically, you know, in terms of the social unease, the community unease that's going to exist for some period of time in any community that faces the -- not just a shooting, but a shooting that focuses on their kids. That is a particular difference.
BROWN: Yes.
KAYYEM: And so over the years, we've come to understand that these cultures, that these, excuse me, communities, it takes a long time to adapt and to regroup and to become resilient. And so this is a community that may have not seen the worst of what we often fear in these school shootings, but it's like -- it's not like this isn't consequential for them. I mean, this is a big deal. And I don't, you know, this elementary school, a K through 6 kid cannot put this in perspective that maybe our older teenage kids can.
BROWN: Yes. You have to think about that psychological toll. All right, everyone stay close. We're going to continue to follow this breaking news, a shooting incident at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon. We will bring you more as we learn it.
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[17:47:02]
BROWN: Back with our breaking news. Bend, Oregon police say children are among the injured after an active shooting incident at an elementary school this afternoon. I want to go back to CNN's Leigh Waldman. What more are you hearing from authorities there in Bend, Oregon, Leigh?
WALDMAN: We know authorities are still working to piece together exactly what happened here, confirming there was an active shooter at this elementary school there in Bend, Oregon. We know unfortunately children are among the injured. You can see those familiar images of police and school buses driving towards a school after a shooting has happened. It's becoming all too familiar. Parents waiting outside, waiting for information.
I just got off the phone moments ago with a woman named Sierra Jordan. She works at a business less than half a mile away from this school and typically they hear the kids outside playing for recess. She hears kids laughing and today that's been replaced by this. You can see ambulances outside of there. Sierra tells me she's never seen so many cops in her life. She described seeing officers and ambulances rushing, making their way towards this elementary school and she shared that one of her co-workers around 1:00 p.m. was on a walk outside and she heard gunfire.
She wasn't sure exactly how many gunshots she heard but she did hear that gunfire. They described the situation as absolutely heartbreaking and just watching these scenes you can see exactly why. Parents waiting for information. We know that two people were taken to a hospital nearby, St. Charles Hospital. We're waiting for more information from Bend Police Department. They promised another news conference later on today and a press release with more information but this is devastating for this community.
BROWN: It certainly is. Leigh Waldman, thank you. I know you're making calls, very busy. I want to bring in Scott MacFarlane now from MeidasTouch. Scott, let's talk about money and resources the school has put into safety programs. I know they have doors locked up when the school starts. They have a glass festival where guests have to go through to proceed in the school. What more are you learning?
SCOTT MACFARLANE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, MEIDASTOUCH NETWORK: So this is the Bend-La Pine school system. That's the school district and they've made the kind of investments over the last few years that so many school districts across the country have, adding a security vest appeal, one of those contained entrances in every school building this elementary school included. In 2022, they made a quarter of a billion dollar investment in new school buildings. Most school systems do that, including better door locking to more quickly affect a lockdown, which would have been the case today.
Like 96 percent of schools across the country, they do lockdown drills at this elementary school. They don't call them active shooter drills in Bend. They call them lockdown drills where students do have to go through that very difficult process of preparing for this. But what's more, they have school resource officers, as do so many school divisions across the country. In Bend, they share police with the Bend City Police Department and the county sheriff's office. I haven't been able to track down yet, though, whether an elementary school like this one would have a school resource officer. In so many school districts across the country, they don't put police, armed visible police, in the elementary schools. Out of just a manpower issue, it's deemed less necessary.
[17:50:16]
BROWN: Wow. Well, it will be interesting to find out whether there was. We know that it was just a few minutes between when the call came in and that the shooter was neutralized and killed that this ended. But of course, it's horrifying for these families and these kids that were there.
MACFARLANE: These drills are hard to do for that reason. Teachers know they have to do the lockdown drills, but it's difficult to kind of communicate to the kids what's about to happen.
BROWN: They're so young. Kindergarteners, you know.
MACFARLANE: It's difficult. The school resource officer program in most, if not all, school systems will have typically officers in high schools and some middle schools, but they'll have an assigned elementary school too. It's in their portfolio, in their jurisdiction. So if Bend is like nearly every school system across the country, they had somebody who they could dispatch from the city or county police from the school resource officer program to be a first responder on the ground. I would imagine in this case, the city police has this school because it's actually in Bend itself.
BROWN: All right. Well, that's really important reporting that the school has invested in safety programs. And again, we need to learn more, but you do have to wonder if that saved lives. Although we do know that children are among the injured, we're waiting to find out more information about how many, what those injuries look like. Let's go to our law enforcement experts to learn more as we wait to hear from the officials there on the ground with more updates.
Jason Pack is with us. He's a retired FBI supervisory special agent. He also served as an EMT and active first responder. Jason, you just heard Scott lay out that some of the security that this school had in place, including, you know, these locks on the door and a glass vestibule. What do you make of that?
PACK: It definitely, school security has improved out of necessity, unfortunately. And when I was going to my kid's school, even as an FBI agent, I still had to go through the same principles to get in the building. So yes, there's definitely been an increase in that. People take that seriously, but Pamela, just think like these kids are used to doing these drills, unfortunately, but when something really happens, just the horror and the terror on the teachers' faces, they have to know something was different about this one. It's not just another drill. And so that would be just horrifying to have to go through that.
Going back to the Bend police press conference there or media briefing, basically, you saw Sheila there come out by herself. And I remember that situation from my own account doing crisis communications in Boston. We wanted to make sure as a public information officer, as representative of this incident, you had the most accurate information. And in instances like these and these types of cases, things change a lot. And just about when you're going out there, there's a new fact and a new fact.
So you really, you have to make sure you're going to get it right. And in certain times we're going to probably see that numbers may fluctuate, hopefully not, but there'll be newer pieces of information or something that when they look into the case, it may not be exactly what was reported through dispatch. So we'll have to keep an eye on that at this upcoming press conference.
BROWN: I think that's really important context. I've learned covering, sadly, these shootings at the field reports, those initial ones can often be wrong, but this is the information we're getting so far from the official that there are multiple injuries, including children, and that the shooter is dead. We really don't know much more. So Juliette, as you're looking at this and you're assessing the situation with the limited information we have, what is going through your mind?
KAYYEM: Well, the most important thing now is the community and the families and the children and their parents. And it looks like almost immediately they had a, this journey church, the sign that you see is being used as what they call a family unification center. It's part of the active shooter protocols. It's what we do in terms of drilling is as law enforcement clears areas, you send children to places where they can immediately find their parents. You do that not only because it's the right thing to do, but what you don't want is parents panicked running into areas that are not secure.
So that's the first thing. And we're learning, you know, I think that was quickly built up and we'll see hopefully most parents were unified with their kids. And then you're going to have the investigation of why this school, why at this time, we know that these are prevalent in the United States, active shooting, active shooters, as well as school shootings. But are there ties to the school? What was the motivation of the killer? And since his identity is known.
BROWN: Yes.
KAYYEM: So this is where this goes now. We've seen it before. But also, I don't know what the numbers are. There's never good numbers. We have to remember that. But three minutes to get law enforcement to eliminate the threat is something that we have trained for. It's what we should expect from law enforcement, but also why we are grateful that there are people who are willing to support our communities because of gun violence.
[17:55:15]
BROWN: Go right into danger. And you think about those teachers too. They are often heroes in the situation, protecting these young kids, kindergarten through fifth grade, more than 400 kids at this public school there in Bend, Oregon. Thank you all. Stand by. We're going to continue to cover this. I also want to share this message from Oregon Governor Tina Kotek. She writes, "I am closely monitoring the situation at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend. I am grateful to the first responders who were on the scene. And I will share as I learn more."
So clearly, officials in Oregon, those here in Washington, as well from Oregon, everyone's paying attention to this and trying to get more details. Everyone stay with us. We'll continue to follow this breaking news, a shooting incident at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon. We'll bring you more as we learn.
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