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Louisville P.D. Says, Multiple Casualties in Active Aggressor Situation; Source Says, Six Victims, Including Police Officer, in Louisville Shooting; Police Say, Five Killed, Six Taken to Hospital After Louisville Shooting. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired April 10, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right you are looking at live pictures. There is breaking news out of Louisville, Kentucky. You see a huge police presence there. There are, quote, multiple casualties, according to police, as they respond to an active aggressor. Officials, including the ATF, are telling everyone to stay away from the area of 300 Block of East Main Street, the mayor also urging the public to stay away from the area. We have now learned that this is a shooting, that there are multiple people who are down, including a police officer.

CNN Correspondent Omar Jimenez is following these developments as we watch them there live from our affiliate, WAVE. We are seeing a lot of police down there, and we're hearing that the governor may be on his way. What can you tell us, Omar?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Sara. For starters, they are describing this as an active or as a shooting incident in Downtown Louisville. They had been describing it earlier. The Louisville Police is trying to get under control an active aggressor situation, in which there were multiple casualties. And we are learning right now that there are six victims, including one police officer, in this incident, according to preliminary information from a source with direct knowledge of the scene on the ground.

There were apparently shots exchanged between the shooter and police during this incident, and according to this source, the gunman is down and the incident is over. So, there's good news there, that this is not currently an active, ongoing situation, but it's for what actually transpired in the amount of people that, you know, maybe hurt or potentially even worse here is a major question as this unfolds.

As you hinted at as well, there are multiple officials that are trying to get out information as quickly as they can. The mayor saying and urging people to stay away from downtown, it's similar calls we've heard and seen from local law enforcement, but also some of those on the federal side as well, Sara.

SIDNER: We are looking at some of the videos now. We're getting a view from a helicopter above of the scene where you see police officers all over the place. I do want to ask you if we know yet -- and this is always hard to know when this information is just coming in, but if we know yet if the shooter in this case is one of the victims, or we do not have that yet. So far, six victims, you said one of them is a police officer. We don't know the status of their health yet, do we?

JIMENEZ: That's right, no. We're still trying to see their conditions. Their conditions are unknown. They have been transported, all of them, to a university hospital there. And it is unclear if the shooter is listed as among one of those victims.

But as I talked about some of those officials heading to the scene to try and get more information, we do know that Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has confirmed that he is heading to the scene. He was one of the first to confirm that this was actually a shooting that we were dealing with here. But, of course, this is in the middle of the major metro city.

We can imagine there were a lot of witnesses, potentially at least people who heard the gunshots were at the very least saw the amount of law enforcement and/or first aid personnel that actually responded to the scene, as we see some of the images on the screen. But it's six victims in total.

And, again, as we're learning from a source with direct knowledge of the scene, one of them appears to be a police officer, as officials of multiple jurisdictions try to get a handle on obviously what happened who this suspect or gunman may have been.

But also when you talk about those that are responding, the ATF, that the FBI is also acknowledged that they are helping with this as well, likely trying to trace the origins of this weapon. A lot of things begin going into effect with the scene like this.

But a lot of details that are still coming in, even at the very least, again, just two conditions of these six victims, again, as far as we know, so far.

SIDNER: Yes, we're looking at the scene from a bird's eye view. And what you can notice immediately as you're watching it is that the officers are no longer frantic, that the scene has been quite calm.

[10:05:02]

You see EMS there taking what appears to be a victim into the ambulance, if I can see that correctly.

And so you're seeing things that look like they're calm. They have dogs out is well. And you mentioned, the ATF, the FBI, we're expecting the governor to come down there as well.

Can you give us any sense of where exactly is this? I know it's downtown, but I thought it was particularly harrowing when you heard the mayor say, basically, look, stay away from the area around Slugger Field, a very popular place for a lot of folks there in Louisville, a lot of kids too. JIMENEZ: Yes. I mean, Slugger Field, you imagine it's a place that many people would want to be -- would want to gather. You know, it's a place people from out of town would potentially come as well. So, it's a it's a known location. It's unclear if that has anything to do or at least it was on the mind of this person who allegedly did this here.

But it obviously will be a major point of this investigation moving forward. Was their significance to this particular location of this person coming in? Was this a targeted attack or was this a situation where it was something outside of the realm of that particular motivation?

So, there are still just so many questions at this point, but, again, it's six people that we know of so far, at least according to our source here in that preliminary information, and because we don't know the status of their conditions, it's hard to know the severity of this particular attack.

But at the same time, with the amount of law enforcement and the number of jurisdictions at both the local, federal and state level that are now responding, you have to imagine this is a very serious incident. They're treating it as such. We've been showing the aerial images, there are so many law enforcement that have responded here.

So, we hope to have more answers soon and, of course, we'll be tracking it for you as things develop.

SIDNER: Omar thank you so much for tracking this for us, getting on the air as fast as possible.

I do want to mention, you know, as we're looking at these pictures from the helicopter, you see there are several areas that have crime tape around them. So, there could have been several different areas where some of this shooting happened.

I want to get straight to Juliette Kayyem. She is here live with us to give us some insight into this. She is on the phone, excuse me, not in the studio. Can you give us some sense of what happens next when you have this mass casualty event that we have seen so many times in this country, including, of course, this year, and we're just in April?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST (voice over): Right. So, each state is going to be slightly different, and, you know, just to be clinical about it because we are in an ongoing mass casualty event, local Louisville Police are clearly taking lead right now. They need to account for individuals, for bodies and also for more victims who may not be close to that area. You are also going to get what we generally see as a lot of concerned citizens who don't know where family members are. We don't know the conditions of who we're reporting has been injured.

But we certainly know just from experience that the governor's announcement and his presence there suggest that this is an event that everyone is taking notice of until we figure out what the motive might be or what the ongoing investigation is, depending on mode of -- Louisville Police, a sophisticated police department, I have worked with them in the past. I know Kentucky very well, a very sophisticated police department, will take the lead. If there's a federal nexus, the FBI will come in.

I should say, Kentucky has been no stranger to a lot of disasters lately. Governor Beshear, weather-related disasters in particular, is known in my field as someone who has their head on straight, will not make this political, wants to protect the citizens of Kentucky, as well as the mayor. So, you have a serious people now taking this very seriously. And so we'll just continue to wait to get verified information from our reporters or the police department on what, in fact, the motive may be.

SIDNER: Juliette, I just want to let people know, and it is disturbing video we're just watching from the helicopter. You see a large amount of blood up on the steps and what looks like a building that is either residential or an office building. And right across the street you are seeing a dozens of police officers. They are sort of standing right outside, and there they are there outside of Slugger Field.

You see the ATF there. The FBI is also taking part of this.

[10:10:00]

What does that tell you? Does that tell you anything about the shooting or does that tell you that they just responded because they were called in?

KAYYEM (voice over): Yes. So, basically, how it would work is the second you have any mass casualty event at this stage, you're going to deploy as many resources as possible. You simply do not know how big this thing is going to get. And, you know, it's easier to retract capabilities after they're deployed, but what you don't want to be is in a situation that you think is minimal and then it ends up being much larger in particular given that the situation and the stat and the location of what we're looking at right now. You are going to assume this is no accident. That's sort of the safer assumption at this stage in terms of both purpose and motive. You can always reassess that.

So, the deployment of resources is what law enforcement trains for all the time. You will have the local first, the Louisville Police Department. They then have a scent relatively quickly that this is a big deal and then call out through an incident command structure that they're trained under for state and then, of course, federal assets. Relatively soon, they are going to determine what is and what -- there is a federal nexus and where the where the FBI will have jurisdiction. So, we'll know that pretty soon.

But, you know, Governor Beshear is en route, if he's not there already. So, they view this as a big deal in terms of both mass casualty and the and the location.

SIDNER: Yes. And I want to tell people what we were watching, as you were speaking Juliette. What you are seeing is the helicopter above the scene, there are lots of different scenes that appears to be where this shooting apparently took place. You can see blood on the steps of a building, but you also saw someone taking pictures and being very interested in a particular car. It was a gray car, so lots going on in the scene right now.

I'm going to toss it over to John who is there with Mr. Miller, who's got a lot of details.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Thanks so much, Sara. Yes, John Miller, Senior CNN Law Enforcement Analyst, former senior official with the New York City Police Department.

John, you have new details about what is happening on the ground.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, prefacing that by everything is preliminary now because this incident isn't very old, and, you know, this information tends to change. But the sense we're getting is that somewhere around 8 30, an individual walks into the Old National Bank and the 300 Block of East Main Street with a weapon and opens fire.

Bank employees fled to the vault and secured themselves inside. Police get there. The doors are locked. They're able to gain entry. There's a confrontation with the shooter. Shots are fired by the shooter. Shots are fired by the Louisville Metropolitan Police. Six people were taken to a university hospital with gunshot wounds. One of them, we understand at this point, is a police officer. The gunman, we understand, is down. They have been able to identify him.

So, what you see now is the clearing of the building. They've got to go up through that building to all the floors, find people who are hiding, people who might be in closets. The building at this point seems to be clear. And now, they're going through the crime scene inside the bank looking for the car that's connected to the shooter.

FBI is on the scene assisting for a couple of reasons. One, it's a bank, which makes a crime inside a bank or even entering a bank with the intent to commit a felony, a federal crime, but they're there primarily to see whatever Louisville P.D. needs, victim witness assistance, forensics um anything like that. We've got ATF on the scene. They're going to be looking at the gunman's weapon, doing those traces to figure out where it was purchased and when and what other guns there might be, that they might need to roll back on a location, a house, do a search warrant and so on, so a lot of moving parts right now.

BERMAN: Let me bring people up to speed if they're just tuning in right now. The breaking news is that there has been a shooting in Downtown Louisville. John Miller, who is with me right now, is reporting it happened inside a bank. You see up on your screen six victims, including a police officer, we do not know the condition of those victims.

MILLER: That's right.

BERMAN: if they're wounded, or worse, we just don't know at this point. So, when we say, victims, we do not know the conditions. John, you mentioned a bank. This happened inside -- all inside the bank or did it continue out into the street again?

MILLER: Again, very fluid. We know part of it happened inside. And I believe that the primary police response was to a bank, which was locked and closed.

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So, they had to force their way in. And inside there was this confrontation. Whether or not that's built onto the streets is actually too early to say it.

BERMAN: And was it a robbery? We hear a shooting in a bank. Does it seem as if this individual walked into a bank to shoot people or did this individual walk into a bank to steal?

MILLER: Too early to tell what the motive was but it does not at this time appeared to be an attempted bank robbery.

BERMAN: Right. When this type of thing happens in a city, where, unfortunately, conditioned to think of schools, churches, other places, but you're talking about a city, in a downtown area. How does that impact the response?

MILLER: Well, you've got an immediate response, which basically takes up the entire bandwidth of the police department. That's in the beginning. You know, you've got shots being fired. You've got multiple victims. You've got hospital transport. And then you've got to sort through the fog of war. Is it this one gunman? Was it multiple gunmen? Is there any other threat in the building?

So, at this point, Louisville is coming back to something close to normal, meaning police are back to responding to calls in other districts and other part of the city. They're working on the scene to determine, okay, how many people do we still need here, how many people can we put back on patrol?

The key point is that the threat is over. The gunman is down. And now it's about piecing together who is this individual, what's the motive, why are we here.

BERMAN: And any word on the weapons used?

MILLER: No, not at this point. I don't know whether it was a long gun or a pistol or multiple guns.

BERMAN: But there was a law enforcement response, which led to a shootout.

In the news this morning, six victims, we do not know their conditions, six people transported to the hospital, including a police officer after this shooting that happened at a bank this morning in downtown Louisville, as John Miller just pointed out.

We're looking at live pictures right now of the aftermath, which looks like obviously the windows, John, there just shot out.

MILLER: Or that could be the police breach to get inside the bank, which was locked when they got there.

BERMAN: And, again, as you're looking at these shots, you can see the situation does seem to be in control. It is now obviously --

MILLER: Yes. The situation is over at this point. I mean, what they're dealing with is at the hospital trying to save people at the scene, trying to have a crime scene investigation now that the building has been cleared.

BERMAN: All right. Again, so what we're going to do, John, we're going to get more information. We're going to try to find out what we can about the conditions of these six people who were at the hospital after a shooting I guess less than an hour ago in Louisville, Kentucky, at a bank.

This is CNN News Central. Our live coverage continues right after this.

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SIDNER: We are continuing to follow breaking news for you at this hour. Officials say there are at least six victims, including a police officer, in a shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. Moments ago, police held a press conference. We're going to take you to that just now.

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DEPUTY CHIEF PAUL HUMPHREY, LOUISVILLE POLICE: I will reiterate that this is an ongoing investigation. This information is preliminary and it will be updated shortly. We ask that the public remain away from the scene. It will be an ongoing scene that will take a long time to investigate. But there is no active danger known to the public at this time.

If anyone has any information related to this incident, we asked that you call 574-LMPD. We will have another update press conference at 11:30. We will be able to answer more questions and put out more information.

As of now, that is all the information that we are able to provide. Thank you.

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SIDNER: All right. You are hearing from the police there in Louisville, giving a little bit more information. Apparently, that is a bank building. There. You see what is left of what's happened there from the shooting. There is blood on the bottom. So, there is disturbing video. You will see the windows have also been shot out there, a couple of those windows shattered. Let's go to CNN's Omar Jimenez, who has been following this up since just a few moments ago watching all this happen. Did you hear anything new from police? We now know there are six people who have been shot, including a police officer. Do we hear anything about their conditions or anything like that?

JIMENEZ: Well, you know, we got the tragic update, as we're seeing, that five people are dead, six taken to the hospital after the shooting. And, obviously, when you first get reports of an active shooter, of an active aggressor, these are the types of reports that you worry about, that the situation updates to the casualties that we're seeing here, the fatalities that are being reported here.

Now, one thing that we did learn from this as well is that the active aggressor threat, as they described it, was over. They said the suspected shooter has been neutralized or the shooter has been neutralized at this point. We're also learning a little bit more about what was happening as this was unfolding, but this is coming from a witness account who is nearby, who spoke to one of our affiliates, saying he got a call from his wife, who said there was an active shooter and that she was locked inside of vault at the Old National Bank here.

And so the man called 911 but officers were already aware. This was happening around 8:30 in the morning there. He described it as a traumatic phone call with his wife essentially calling him from inside the bank vault where she was sheltering at the time.

[10:25:05]

He since talked to her and that she's okay, but, obviously, this was a situation that the shooter was actively firing at folks, and we know at least one person, potentially even others were sheltering inside a bank vault just to be safe, just to protect themselves.

And so, obviously, we've gotten the update from police that some of these casualties have confirmed now into fatalities and that others have been taken to the hospital. Their conditions are still unknown. We know the governor is headed out to the scene right now. We know there's law enforcement at multiple jurisdictions that have said they are responding at the local level, Louisville Police, but also ATF, FBI.

And so I think at this point we're now waiting to see what develops from here, including the potential identity of the shooter here, and we watch to see if these numbers unfortunately grow, as they typically do, when we get into the early stages of reporting mass shootings like these, Sara.

SIDNER: really terrifying hearing that account from inside of the bank, a woman in a bank vault saying someone was shooting. There are lots of potential things that may have happened here. We don't know at this point if there was a robbery, if this was a disgruntled -- we don't know anything about why. What we do know now, five people have perished in the shooting. You've got one person who has been taken to the hospital. Omar Jimenez, thank you so much for following this story for us in Downtown Louisville. Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. So, to reiterate the update on this breaking news, this developing situation out of Louisville, Kentucky, according to police, there are now five confirmed dead, six others transported to the area hospital following this shooting at a bank in Louisville.

Juliette Kayyem, she's with us back now. Juliette, more information is coming in, and now this has become a very serious situation, with five fatalities reported by police just now with -- we're going to have another update in about an hour, it seems, Louisville Police, which we will learn some more. But your reaction now learning these more details -- these additional details?

KAYYEM: Well, I mean, this is a mass casualty event, which are defined as four more people dead in a single incident, and not the first one over the course of the last three days. And so this is this is part of a nationwide issue in which guns are being used for whatever purpose. We don't know motive yet. And you have five people whose lives are taken, and then, of course, the family members and community that are impacted by that.

The six taken to the hospital, we don't know what their condition is, and that's going to actually depend on the gun type. Is this is an survivable gun wound, and they were just able to make it to the hospital or will we see some good news related to those six that they're able to be safe?

Louisville has excellent hospitals and an emergency response protocol that I'm very familiar with for a variety of reasons related to whether and also high-profile events that they hold. So, they have a rigorous incident command that is now in play here, that you're seeing on the screen right now, and we'll hear more from the police about potential motive. That's going to be our focus, and then, of course, the weapon.

BOLDUAN: Two things I wanted to ask you about. I heard you mention earlier that you've you have familiarity with the Louisville Police and their capabilities in terms of now what is going to be -- and the police even said in this press conference, going to be a very long investigation, and also the fact that this has taken this has taken place in a bank. just what that what that brings to mind for you in terms of what happens now?

KAYYEM: So -- and we can't ignore that fact that this -- the banks are traditionally targets. They're not soft targets, though, and that's going to be the interesting part of this. I heard someone mentioned earlier, you're always going to look to workplace violence, a former employee, someone who knows an employee. Because banks are just so fortified that they end up not being very easy to get money out of, and because most bank robbers essentially do not want killings. They want to get the money and get out.

So, this, in my mind, just based on experience, this is not similar to other bank robberies. So, that's why the police said, we're going to continue to look to motive because we don't know if there's a nexus between the killer and, of course, some aspect of the bank. But, of course, we have to put a bank robbery on the list of potential motives at this stage.

When I talk about Louisville, Kentucky, you know, you're talking about urban police department that knows how to do this. And they're basically talking about the long investigation ahead. Whether there's a federal nexus will depend or will trigger the extent to which the FBI or the U.S. attorney's office will be involved.

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