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Shooting At Old National Bank In Louisville, Kentucky; Louisville Bank Shooting: Five Dead, At Least Six Injured; Update On The Shooting In Louisville Will Be Provided By Police and Mayor. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 10, 2023 - 10:30:00   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I suspect that this press conference at 11:30, you'll see everyone because we simply don't know yet. You'll see local, state and federal entities combined together until they're able to figure out what the motive is.

But you know, it is not necessarily true that you say bank and then therefore this is a bank robbery. Most bank robberies do not result in these kinds of casualties, not five dead. This is something -- based on my experience, this this is probably something else.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Just to reiterate the update from law enforcement that just happened at a very brief press conference that happened, five people dead.

KAYYEM: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Six, at least six others, it's how it's described, people were transported to the University of Louisville Hospital, including one officer with various injuries is how the law enforcement officer that was handling the briefing put it. And also, importantly, in addition, as people wondering the law enforcement officer briefing at the scene, says the shooter is confirmed to be dead. Circumstances around his death, though unknown.

We do know we saw a tweet from Governor Andy Beshear that he was headed to the scene. And of course, when -- any of us see that, that obviously means that this situation is -- this -- generally, in terms of the ongoing threat to the community is over. The governor would not be heading there with his detail had it not been.

KAYYEM: That's absolutely right. So, the governor is getting his briefings from the state police. This governor, as I was saying in the earlier hour, is no stranger to crises and disasters. He, sort of, came here with between COVID and then a number of other disasters. He's sort of well-known to be able to help manage a community and get the resources that are necessary.

They would not be sending him, but for the fact that the facility and the cider (ph), of course, protected. We know the gunman is dead at this stage, and the big issue is, once again, every time is family unification and notification. There are five families whose lives have changed today as a result of what happened. Six additional ones around the six victims at the hospital who are looking to see where their loved one is.

This is the primary focus right now. We need to do this right and you need to care for these families in terms of the unification and getting people to back together again. It's the primary. You know, it's sort of rule number one now in mass shootings. We just have to treat the family as well as they learn this news or taking the hospitals to see their loved ones.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Juliette Kayyem, thank you as always, Juliet, for jumping on --

KAYYEM: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: -- in these moments of crises. Thank you.

John, over to you.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. With us now, Chief CNN Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller, a former senior official in New York City Police Department. Also, at the federal level, just what we know again, five people killed at the Old National Bank on East Main Street in downtown Louisville. Six others injured. You've been on the phone, as you're sitting here with me. What have you learned?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So, what we understand is the gunman walked into the bank early this morning, opened fire on people. Some people were able to flee to the bank vault and locked themselves in. And then we're able to contact police from inside the vault.

Police arrived on the scene. The bank doors were locked. They attempted to get in, had to break their way in by breaching the doors. And at this point, there is some kind of armed confrontation with the shooter. The shooter is down and deceased at the scene. Weapons have been recovered from the shooter, or I should say, a weapon or weapons.

The circumstance that is not clear right now, and this is not uncommon to have this fog as an incident. It's unfolding quickly. And you've got multiple versions from multiple people is whether police killed the shooter in an exchange of gunfire, or whether the shooter opened fire on police and killed himself from a self-inflicted wound.

Again, that's all up in the air while they process that crime scene, review body camera, if there is any, from the responding units, and talk to witnesses. Beyond the body camera, of course, it's a bank. There will be multiple cameras with multiple angles of video of what occurred inside.

SARA SIDNER, ANCHOR: Can I ask --

BERMAN: All right. Multiple angles of video. Hang on. I'm so sorry, sir. It's just we just got video in of the situation. I do believe you will hear some gunshots here. So, let's all take a look at what just came in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[10:35:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Active shooter at the bank.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Active shooter at the bank. Get out of your car. Active shooter at the bank.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. We heard three gunshots there. Clearly, there were many more than that. John Miller, anything you can tell from that. And also, just the timing of this, this all happened before, in theory, the bank would have been open to customers.

MILLER: Well, if it was 8:30, in local time, depending on whether the bank opens, whether that's 9:00. But the key factor is whether it occurred when the bank was open, and that's how the shooter gained access or after when police got there. The doors were locked. They had to force their way inside.

SIDNER: The banks --

BOLDUAN: John, you --

SIDNER: I'm sorry.

BOLDUAN: Go ahead, Sara. Go ahead, Sara.

SIDNER: The banks often are places where we all know there's usually security, usually armed security, and it's one of the most secure places. Is there any sense that maybe those doors could be locked from the inside if there's something that happens? Because if the doors were locked, it tells you a little bit more about the suspect, does it not?

MILLER: It does, but yet that's still an unknown whether the doors were locked and the suspect gained entry and the doors were locked behind him or whether he caused the doors to be locked for the very purpose of slowing down the police response or holding hostages. Just a lot that at this stage isn't clear in the narrative. The facts we do know are there were shots fired. Police forced entry. There were additional shots fired. A police officer was injured and the gunman was killed. We've got five people who apparently were killed inside, six others taken to the hospital.

So, it's an extraordinarily serious incident. In the standard that they used to classify these things, it counts as a mass shooting.

SIDNER: Mass shooting.

BOLDUAN: John, Juliette Kayyem raised something that again in the early moments, possibly unknowable. But are you hearing any suggestion what -- because the shooting happened at a bank, as Juliette says, it doesn't necessarily mean it was an attempted bank robbery. Are you hearing anything from your sources suggesting any direction in terms of that?

MILLER: What I'm hearing from my sources -- and I caveat everything by saying at this stage, it's all preliminary --

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

MILLER: -- as they do not believe it was a bank robbery.

SIDNER: That's really --

BOLDUAN: Which could -- which also leaves open a slew of other motivations that we don't know yet which we could be hearing in where are we now in about an hour when the police said that they could offer the next briefing.

BERMAN: A bank, whether or not you're going there to rob it or something else, if you are going to engage in shooting at a bank, there can't be a reasonably high expectation you'll get out alive. It is the type of place that is well guarded, where people are well- armed, and you know that there will be a quick police response or you should know that.

MILLER: I mean, it's one of the things you factor in. But as we see in so many of these active shooter incidents and, you know, we're all kind of a broken record on this --

SIDNER: Right.

MILLER: -- but too many active shooter incidents. The idea that we're having some version of this conversation literally every week or every two weeks is a problem. But as we learned from the collective wisdom is the shooter often doesn't intend to come out alive. And there are exceptions to that.

If you look at the Buffalo supermarket shooting, he wrote in his own manifesto and built into his plans, part of my goal is to survive the shooting to tell my story and so on. But in many of these cases, we see them expecting to be confronted or killed by police or take their own lives. It's part of the narrative in the active shooter genre which is, I'm going to rewrite the story of my life and recast myself.

BERMAN: All right. Breaking news is we are now learning that five people are dead, six taken to the hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. The Old National Bank, a shooting there this morning. The incident is over. We're getting new details in, we're going to have much more right after a quick break on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:00]

SIDNER: We come back to our breaking news here. Looking at live pictures of the scene there in downtown Louisville. There has been a shooting at Old National Bank. Five people are dead, six others are injured, including a police officer. All six have been transferred to the hospital. The officer has several different injuries. We're going to go now to CNN's Omar Jimenez, who is live for us, and he's been tracking all of this.

From the moment it happened, I think around 8:30 and I just looked up at the bank doesn't open until 9:00. So, getting a little bit more information about what this maybe. What do you have for us, Omar? Omar

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Of course, Sara. And, you know, that's one thing that the police and investigators will be looking into as far as, you know, why did this particular shooter do this? And that timing, of course, very key. Now, one thing we've gotten from police is we just got that as to this point, you said it was around 8:30, it was exactly correct. Calls came in for an active aggressor, as it was described initially, around 8:30 this morning at the Old National Bank. We know this was an active shooter.

[10:45:00]

Officers came on the scene within minutes. The lone shooter, as described by Louisville police, has been killed. And then the total killed is five, at least six more were transported to the hospital. And critically, there is no further danger to the public this morning as well. But they are still asking the public to avoid the area.

And in some further insight into how, sort of, this unfolded as we got that a little bit from a witness who is nearby, trying to speak to or was on the phone with his wife, who was sheltering inside of vault at this bank. She knew there was an active shooter going on. So, likely she was in there to try and protect herself from the shooter. We don't know if there were others in there with her as well. She was asking her husband to call 9-1-1. By the time he did get a hold of 9-1-1, they said they were already aware of this particular incident.

As police have mentioned they were on the scene within minutes. And then at this point, we do know that the shooter has been killed. Though how he was killed or the manner in which this exchange of gun fires, as we've learned, is still unknown which could also provide a key detail as well, Sara.

SIDNER: OK. Omar there with new information that the shooter is dead. There are five people who have been killed, that seems to include the shooter. And we've got some sound some updates for you. Let's listen to them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's at the bank at this building. Their protocol is to get into the vault. Me and her have had that conversation several times. Hit the panic button, go to the vault. Don't fight. Don't do anything. Lock yourself up, hide, and let it go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: OK. So, you heard there, they have a protocol like every bank would, to go into the vault but hit the panic button first, which, of course, would alert authorities that something terrible is going on inside the bank. Do we know anything new about the condition of the officers or the others who have been taken to the hospital at this point?

JIMENEZ: At this point, we've just been described that the -- there are varying conditions right now for the particular law enforcement. He's been -- being described or they've been -- they are being described as one officer with various injuries, that's a quote being given. So, we'll wait to see what comes of that, including, of course, the others as well.

But Sara, as we know we're in the preliminary stage of a mass shooting like this, and you and I have covered many of these, unfortunately, too many, especially across the United States and the numbers we get at the preliminary typically aren't the ones that we end up with at the end of the day. So, we're hoping that this case is the exception here, even as tragic as this has already been. But obviously that is one side of things. And then the other side is going to be trying to piece together what may have motivated this person into this.

Was this a personal dispute? Was this a dispute with the bank itself? Was this someone who just had rage in their heart and wanted to commit violence? They're all going to be very critical questions. And to trying to piece together any sort of why here, but no matter what that answer ends up being, it will likely be little comfort to those who have already lost loved ones, Sara.

SIDNER: Absolutely. This has happened more than 128 times so far this year. That's more mass shootings than days of the year. And we do know now the bank -- this happened around 8:30, the police said. The bank didn't open until 9:00. John and Kate.

BOLDUAN: And John Miller is here still with us. John, just reacting to that bit of sound, that interview that we just heard from on the scene, this man speaking to his wife saying, you know, there's protocol in place, hit the panic button and run to the vault. It just, kind of -- but still five people are dead, one of being the shooter, six others injured, it just shows how quickly this really unfolded.

MILLER: Yes, and I mean, these things do move very quickly. So, you know, if you hear shots and you have the wherewithal to escape to the vault and then close the vault, that puts you in a contained safe environment. It's a vault. I mean, that's a real advantage.

But by the time you heard those shots, what's the damage that's already been done? And it sounds like as it's unfolding and we'll learn more. The press conference seems to be moved up to 11:00 now. So, in a short while we'll hear from Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey and other partners with the Louisville P.D. to fill us in. But it sounds like somebody opened fire and those who could flee to safety did and those who couldn't are likely among those five fatalities in the bank and the six who were transported to hospitals.

BERMAN: And one of the things we did or that did come out of that press conference, which we're trying to get ahold of right now is that officers do say they arrived on the scene within minutes. MILLER: That's a very quick response. And, you know, witnesses that, you know, we've seen reporting say they heard shots. Police were there very quickly.

[10:50:00]

They made an attempt to breach the bank and weren't able to and had to come back and do a second attempt which got them inside. That could be -- you know, theoretically, a bank should be a hard place to get into.

BOLDUAN: Right.

MILLER: They may have needed tools, including breaching tools, to get through that door and that's what led to the confrontation where the police officer was shot. And then there's all the rest that comes with this, which is you've got an -- you've got a bank at 333 East Main Street, but you've got an eight-story building involved in that. You have people, you know, who have fled, who are hiding, who heard shots.

So, they had to clear every floor of that building and then hold that area, and then clear the next floor, looking for is there another gunman? Are there people hiding and all that? So, it took a long time to be able to say, this is over. The gunman is down. The people have been transported. And now, we're basically in crime scene mode.

BOLDUAN: Yes, just an update for everybody, we're just getting this in from our White House unit from CNN's Jeremy Diamond, that President Biden has been informed of the shooting in Louisville. This is, according to a White House official and that the White House is going to have more to share later on.

BERMAN: And look as, John, and we all have been saying, this is the latest mass shooting in this country.

BOLDUAN: Uh-huh.

BERMAN: This is the latest time that President Biden has been notified of a mass shooting.

BOLDUAN: Right.

BERMAN: This is the latest time he will, no doubt, have to make a statement. It's the Easter egg roll at the White House.

BOLDUAN: They're in the midst of it right now.

BOLDUAN: It's Easter egg roll. So, you, you know, you can only imagine, the mixture of emotions there as this is all happening.

BOLDUAN: And also, something that you're very familiar with, John, is just how practice and prepared police departments around the country need to be with not just the rapid response to calls and reports of an active shooter, but how to deal with as it continues to unfold. What do you think of just how quickly -- we now are going to have -- if we wouldn't call our second press conference. This -- the first call is coming into 8:30, we're going to have our second press conference coming in starting at 11:00 a.m.

You are -- what do you -- what's your take in, kind of, the response that we have seen as much more to learn of the motivation and the details that we can't -- it's tough to speculate about at this point?

MILLER: I mean, what we see so far is a little bit of the model. A lot of things were done here right that we can just see at this stage.

BOLDUAN: Uh-huh.

MILLER: And, you know, this will be reviewed and reviewed later. But what you see is a fast response, that's number one. Number two, what you see is OK. So, we're not going to wait outside and, you know, wait for the hostage negotiating team and assess what's going on. It will be an important question to know, did they hear shots? Were there 9-1- 1 calls already about people down?

But what you saw there next is immediate action, rapid deployment. That's form a contact team and make your way to the threat. To do that, they had to break through windows. They had to enter a bank where they knew, based on the 9-1-1 calls, that there was a gunman inside and advance towards that threat and meet that threat at their own peril. And then there was a gunfight, apparently, between Louisville P.D. and the gunman.

We still don't know whether they killed the gunman or whether the gunman took his own life. Now, we understand that's a 35-year-old individual. They have his identity. They have not yet identified him publicly. That will probably tell them a lot, which we will learn later as to the motive.

But you also saw important steps. They tweeted out to the public. This is going on. Stay away from that area. They tweeted out to the public when it was under control and still to stay away from the area. And for our standpoint, within a very short time they did a preliminary press conference. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Here's when we're coming back, and they're coming back again within the next few minutes.

BOLDUAN: That helps either inform the public, this is ongoing and there's an ongoing threat or to alleviate what, obviously, is going to be quick and widespread anxiety that, you know, if it has come to a conclusion.

MILLER: But I mean, I think what we saw here is they used all the tools --

BOLDUAN: Uh-huh.

MILLER: -- you know, that they had. Whether they were social media, direct mass media, the immediate action rapid deployment response. This is, unfortunately --

BOLDUAN: Exactly.

MILLER: -- something that is well trained for. BERMAN: Yes.

MILLER: But really, unfortunately, too well-practiced.

BERMAN: Yes. People are getting good at it, which tells you a lot in and of itself. And even though they did, maybe as well as they could, there are still five people dead this morning.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly right. We have five people deceased that we believe that does include the gunman at this point, six others transported to area hospitals. Their condition, the state that they're in, that is still unknown. We are expecting to get another press update, an update, a press briefing from law enforcement.

[10:55:00]

I'm also told that will also include the governor of Kentucky and the mayor of Louisville. They're going to be holding a briefing shortly again. These times are fluid, but we're anticipating another update coming in very soon. We're going to continue to update you on this breaking news in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:00]