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Police Identify Suspect As 24-Year-Old Deion Patterson; Police: 1 Dead, At Least 4 Injured In Atlanta Shooting; Suspect At Large. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 03, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I mean, I know there's a shooting, but we don't have all of the information. It's very fluid. So look, is the President frustrated about what we're seeing in our communities, in our schools, in our churches, in this epidemic that we've seen, this gun violence epidemic and this is a - yes, of course, he's frustrated.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yes, it is very fluid. What we do know is this happened at Northside Family Medicine and urgent care at a building that houses that office as well as others. And this was the suspect, we have learned from Ryan Young, was there attending an appointment. An appointment for him, a medical appointment for him when he became agitated and this is - and you see in a photo here, this was actually taken from the scene. This is a photo provided from police.

And police are saying that following or in the middle of that appointment is when this all played out. I do want to bring in Andrew McCabe to talk a little bit about what we are seeing and some of the outstanding questions because at this point, you have a search, an all-out search that authorities are conducting at this point in time. But also they do not know where this individual is, Andy. And so that creates a potentially very broad area as they are looking for this person.

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: That's exactly right, Brianna. So let's think first in terms of the area that's currently within the perimeter, the area that's shut down. Even that is a large, large area to search carefully.

So you have tactical teams that have to literally go through every single space or container that could hold a human being. So it's every hallway, every room, every closet, every storage area and you're doing it knowing that you're looking for someone who is - has a gun and has already shot at people today. So that has to be done carefully, slowly and deliberately.

So that alone can take a long time. Now if you layer on the possibility that this individual has actually gotten outside the perimeter, whether through the carjacking that we've heard reported on or through some other means maybe changing his appearance, well, at that point, all bets are off. You're essentially looking at a manhunt like we just watched take place outside of Houston, Texas over the last several days. So this could really we could be here for quite some time tracking these events.

KEILAR: The shelter in place we just learned has lifted, is that correct? That's - is that what we're learning, Michelle? Okay. So the shelter in place, Andy, has lifted. So what does that tell you about the developing situation here?

Andrew McCabe: Well, it could indicate that they now believe there's no longer a threat of that person being present in that area that was formerly under a shelter in place advisory and that tells us that the law enforcement officers on the scene believe that he's outside of that area or at least that they are no longer confident that he is within that shelter in place area.

So without knowing exactly whether the shelter in place was the same general area as the part that's been perimetered (ph) off, it's hard to say exactly where they think he might be. But it's not a good sign in terms of law enforcements' confidence in being able to locate and apprehend this person quickly.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Andrew McCabe, let me put it just in a different way. Would you if you were in command of this area lift a shelter in place order if you had any fear that the suspect was still in that area?

MCCABE: No, Jim, I wouldn't. And I particularly would leave the shelter in place order standing until we had completed that careful and thorough search of the entire area, right? If you've completed that search and you haven't found this individual, you're pretty confident he's not in that area, then at that point you lift your shelter in place.

And so it tell - it hints to me that that may be what's going on here. We don't know for sure, because they haven't said but it certainly looks that way.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And Andy, you noted a moment ago if this suspect is out of that perimeter, all bets are off. Talk to us about the difficulties law enforcement are facing if that is the case, because now at this point, it's been roughly, what, two hours since shots were fired. So what does that present for them in terms of challenges?

MCCABE: Yes. So Boris that basically turns what we've been watching, which is a clearance operation in a defined area into a manhunt and so now you're thinking totally differently. You're thinking about, okay, how can we track this individual, one of the best ways to do that is to get the photograph out to get as much information about this person out publicly on the media as we can.

[15:05:07]

We've seen them do that and add to those photographs very recently. So that might be an indication that that's the direction they're looking. Another way is you immediately start to try to identify things that can be tracked, like cell phones, credit cards, debit cards, things like that and then you use your electronic means to tag all those things and to try to see if you can locate this person by their use of those sorts of electronic access points or telephones, things like that.

You are also going to start looking at all of his known associates, family members, for sure. And potentially work associates, people that this person might reach out to for help or assistance or transportation, things along those lines.

So you - those concentric rings of focus keep getting bigger, and bigger and bigger. But essentially what you're looking for is a scrap of evidence or fact that you can tie back to this guy and where he might be.

SCIUTTO: Just briefly, because we've mentioned this carjacking which may or may not be connected to this. Police have now updated and again we should always note that it's hard. They're getting information. They update that information as they get it. And as it changes, they say they are currently working to locate a vehicle that was carjacked shortly after the time of this shooting to determine if it is connected to the shooting. So they have not definitively determined that it's connected, but they are still, one, still working to recover that vehicle and, two, working to confirm that it that it's tied to this.

KEILAR: And one of the big assets I would presume, Andy, that police have in this case is his mother, right? She was there at the appointment and she is talking to police. And so all of those leads that you were just describing that they're going to be pulling on, people that he knows, places he would go, she may be aware of all of that, Andy.

MCCABE: That's exactly right, Brianna. And I'm sure, we've heard for a while now that she's been cooperating with the police. So I'm sure they've been interviewing her about those things even as we've been focused on the clearance operation.

They're asking her what - does he use social media. If so, which platforms is he on; does he have friends; does he have a cell phone, does he use an iPad, all those sorts of questions give you a better view of the scope of those things that you could potentially exploit to locate this individual.

I should also say, though, that the carjacking information is really a great indication of just how complicated and hard this is for police. So remember, the Atlanta Police, they're getting calls all day long, hundreds of calls from all kinds of different things happening around town.

And every time one of those calls includes a fact or a description that is somehow - could somehow arguably be related to this person, now they're adding that to the pile of things that they have to check out to determine if it's a - if the gentleman they're looking for.

So it's - there are many - probably many other calls similar to this carjacking that they're wondering could this be related. So it's a lot of work to do.

SCIUTTO: Boris, I'm thinking as he's talking about the mother who went to the hospital ...

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: ... with the suspect initially concerned about a situation, reminds me of the mother in the shooting Louisville - at the Louisville bank, right, who had made a call concerned about what her son's mental state was.

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: These are families doing their best in the midst of something, they don't know for sure what's going to happen next or how it's going to happen, they're doing their best. But, of course, they can't always do it in time.

SANCHEZ: And speaking to that Louisville situation you heard on the 911 tapes that were released, she was finding out information from the operator as it was unfolding.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.

SANCHEZ: Obviously, a difficult situation for this mother who we understand was trying to do right by her son.

SCIUTTO: Mm-hm.

SANCHEZ: We want to expand the conversation now and bring in Joshua Skule. He's a former FBI Executive Assistant Director of Intelligence. Joshua, if we could just step back for a moment. I understand you've been monitoring this. What are your impressions of what you're seeing?

JOSHUA SKULE, FORMER FBI EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR INTELLIGENCE: So what I'm seeing is a drawdown from the tactical response to the manhunt investigation. And what that leads me to believe is that the police, whether it's the carjacking or other probably video evidence that shows that the suspect, Deion, has departed the area or is on foot someplace or in a vehicle heading out of the area.

Otherwise there would not - they would not have lifted the shelter in place because there's too much risk to the public in such a populated area.

SCIUTTO: Do you know - I might be - you're coming in from Washington, D.C. but is Atlanta the kind of city that would have a good deal of - I mean, if this was New York City there are CCTV cameras on every corner post 911 where you can track in real time vehicles and suspects as they move. Is Atlanta to your knowledge a city with that sort of camera network?

[15:10:05]

SKULE: Jim, I'm not sure that Atlanta is as robust as New York, but it's an advanced police department. And when you're coupling together the totality of law enforcement response: FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals, Atlanta PD, you have a great opportunity to track this suspect using very technologically advanced mechanisms.

The challenge to all that is making sure you're getting all of that information into a single place to be able to differentiate who's responding to what and how do you not duplicate efforts.

KEILAR: And so at this point in time, what threads are they pulling on as they are looking for alternate places that he may be? They may have a sense that he has left this downtown area, the other places that he may have gone, how are they trying to figure that out?

SKULE: So much like Andy had stated before and certainly the mother is cooperating and she is talking about all of his close friends, work, social media, cell phone, they are looking at video evidence, they're using witness reports, which can be accurate and inaccurate and they have to run all of that down. As we saw initially, the carjacking was not attributed to this.

Now it could be they're getting they're of these tips in. They need the public's help, but that comes with a certain volume of information that has to be sorted through by law enforcement and responded to all of those because you don't know whether or not one tip is going to lead to the next. That's how it becomes very complicated. It's very manpower intensive and the mom is going to be a critical component of that. And likely they will be using her as they get additional information to help verify it.

SANCHEZ: We should note police have just put out to the public that there is now a $10,000 reward out for the capture of Deion Patterson, the 24 year old considered armed and dangerous suspected of having opened fire at a medical center in downtown Atlanta shooting. Five people - or hurting, should say, five people. One of them killed on the scene. At least four others injured at a local hospital. We're going to stay on top of this story monitoring the latest developments and bring you the very latest on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, stay with us.

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[15:16:02]

SCIUTTO: This just in, an important update to the ongoing shooter situation in Atlanta. We have reports of shots fired now.

Our Nick Valencia he's in Atlanta covering the story. Nick, tell us what you know.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Jim. Thing got tense here just in the last 30 seconds. We heard what appeared a sound like gunshots coming from around the area. We're not quite sure, but we did overhear somebody say it was on Peachtree Street and Ponce.

And then almost immediately after that, we saw police officers in tactical gear sprinting to their vehicles and then putting on their sirens and taking off. It's interesting because just a few minutes prior to that, the Atlanta Police Department had put out a notice lifting shelter in place advisory.

I'm sorry, if I sound a little out of breath. We were running towards the scene. Again, it was just a, sort of a barrage of what appeared to sound like gunshots in the area followed before and afterwards by officers and heavy tactical gear getting into their Atlanta police cars and then speeding off in the direction where we appear to hear the shots coming from.

And, again, that was just a few minutes after a shelter in place has been lifted. You remember police officers saying that it was a potential carjacking that may have been connected on 14th and 11th. I say that now as we're seeing another - what appears to be a huge armored vehicle show up in the area. There's dozens of police officers all throughout this area.

And again, as - those shots would appear to sound like gunshots being fired, there was a barrage of them and then they stopped. We don't see any officers right now running anywhere. Things have sort of calmed down and settled down. But it was a very sort of tense - extremely tense moment for all those involved in the media and around here seeing those officers get into their vehicles with shotguns, tactical gear telling each other to hurry up and get in the car and then speeding off in that direction. Jim.

KEILAR: Can you describe it again just how many shots you thought were heard there?

VALENCIA: At least half a dozen if not more. They sounded not too close but close enough to be heard. And then we saw that activity from the - those Atlanta Police Department officers in heavy tactical gear and shotgun get into their cars and speed off.

Brianna, it all unfolded in the matter of just a couple of minutes here. We had all sort of - kind of let our guard down a little bit because we've got that advisory from the Atlanta police department that the shelter in place order here had been lifted. And there was not a belief that there was any immediate threat to those in the area.

I'm saying this now as we're being told to get back over across the crime tape, where that crime was pulled down briefly. And in that time, that's when we - that incident been unfolded that we heard what appeared to sound like gunshots in the vicinity. Brianna?

SCIUTTO: To your point, Nick, the police had said in a statement just a short time ago that they had no information indicating the suspect was still in the area of the shooting at that time. But again, we should acknowledge this is a highly fluid situation. The police are getting new information every moment and they've acknowledged they did not know up to this point where the suspect was. We will update you if they come out with a definitive information.

SANCHEZ: Let's listen to Nick. Nick, did you just say that more SWAT teams are showing up to where you are?

VALENCIA: Yes. I'm sorry to be jumping in on you guys, but this is active. We've seen four police cars including a Fulton County SWAT vehicle with SWAT members on the back of that vehicle going forward the site where the initial incident unfolded. This is all unfolding in front of us right now live, guys.

SANCHEZ: Nick, did you see any ambulances heading in that direction? Did it appear that officers were rushing toward a certain area?

VALENCIA: A great question, Boris. No ambulances but there continues to be a heavy police presence. And now just in the last few seconds more police that have shown up at this incident, just right after they had closed it down, they're putting back up the crime scene tape as I see them.

[15:20:06]

KEILAR: And how far away exactly or approximately, Nick, do you think that is from the initial location at Northridge family medicine and urgent care?

VALENCIA: It couldn't be more than two blocks, Brianna. We're currently standing on West Peachtree and 12th Street in front of high rises here. There are businesses. We're looking at that sign that we've seen throughout the day on that Northside sign. It couldn't have been more than a couple of blocks away. Again, it was faint enough where it was far away but close enough where we could hear that barrage of what sounded like at about a half a dozen gunshots, Brianna.

SCIUTTO: Goodness. And we should note, just 12 minutes ago at 3:06 pm, the Atlanta Police Department had lifted the shelter in place order. But again, we should acknowledge they're doing their best right now to track down a suspect to this point. They were not - have not been able to locate.

KEILAR: And listen, everyone we've spoken to law enforcement analysts have said that if they were lifting that stay in place order, they believe they were doing so ...

SCIUTTO: Right.

KEILAR: ... because they were understanding that the suspect was no longer in the area. Obviously, when you have people sheltering in place and you have a suspect at large, you don't just willy-nilly go ahead and lift something. However, it now appears there is cause for concern and it's raising more questions about what is happening there in the area as Nick Valencia is reporting, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: The crime tape - crime scene tape is going back up.

SANCHEZ: Is going back up that is concerning, especially because in delicate situations like this, so many people are on edge. I've covered shootings, where after police had neutralized the shooter, there was concern that there might have been a second shooter and there was ...

SCIUTTO: Right.

SANCHEZ: ... an urgency, a rush people running around, that was the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting back in 2017. So in these situations, confusion is rampant and people may hear things and interpret them in certain ways.

Let's go back to John Miller.

And John, what do you make of the fact that that yellow tape had been taken down, that the stay in place order had been lifted and now it appears that officers are rushing in a certain direction and putting yellow tape back up?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, it just shows how fluid this situation really is. We know police don't know where the suspect is because they conducted their search of the place that they had contained and then their secondary search and they didn't find him there.

On the other hand, now we have these reports of shots fired, which means one of two things. Possibly that the suspect is still in the area and fired additional shots or that there was some kind of confrontation with police where shots were exchanged. It's just not clear at this time.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And we don't we don't know, the police - to be clear, the police have not announced that there has been a shooting in that downtown area.

SANCHEZ: Boris.

SCIUTTO: They've been updating as quickly as they can. It was just a few minutes before that they lifted - they had lifted that shelter in place order.

But John, listen, you served a number of years in the NYPD, you know that they're doing their best with the information they have, which is imperfect and incomplete at this point. Can you walk us through what steps they'd be taking right now to locate the suspect?

MILLER: Well, they're getting reports from the public sightings of possible people fitting the general description or that look like the face of the new picture that they just put out and they're following those reports up. Is it possible that there was some confrontation between one of those people, again, not clear.

But what they're going to be doing is now expanding that perimeter, re-establishing it and figuring out what occurred with whether those were shots fired or not. You raised an interesting point a few minutes ago about what is their technology.

Atlanta PD has 3,000 police cameras spread across the city with a good concentration of them right there in that downtown area. It all comes into their VIC or the Video Integration Center where they can monitor those cameras. So they'll be scanning those cameras from the VIC right now to look at where did this happen, can they see anything that wasn't observed by officers on the scene, can they get a direction of flight from a suspect if there was a direction of flight. And that's backed up by thousands of other private cameras that businesses have allowed the police department to connect with and license plate readers.

SCIUTTO: That's a good point. Oftentimes, it is private cameras outside a shop or even outside a home that can be crucial in this sort of incident.

MILLER: And the key ...

SCIUTTO: Please do stay with us, we're going to ...

MILLER: ... and the key in that is that connectivity, which is, yes, you can go back later and download from them. But when you need the information in real time to have that real time connection is important and they do in many, many cases there.

SCIUTTO: And they got a photo from CCTV of him and now this license - driver's license photo we've been sharing very quickly to share with the public.

[15:25:05]

Listen, we're sharing with you all the information we have as we get it from our reporters and the police as best we can. Active shooter still on the loose based on our latest information, one dead, four injured, three critical. We're going to take a short break and be right back.

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[15:30:01]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back.