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Remembering The Shooting Victims

Aired July 20, 2012 - 12:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I was trying to crawl out, but everybody was crawling back in and they said don't go over there, because he is going to shoot everybody who is trying to get out of the main doors, and he was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: It was a night of the movies that turned into a day of tragedy and shock and grief. I'm Suzanne Malveaux in CNN headquarters. We are preempting NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL for breaking news coverage of this massacre at a Colorado movie theater.

We welcome our CNN International viewers who are now watching from around the world.

You are watching cell phone video capturing the chaos after a man burst into a theater in Aurora, Colorado, and opened fire. At least 12 people were killed, 38 others wounded.

Now, the theater, it was packed with people attending the premier of a new Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises." Well, the gunman starts this rampage. Police arrested the suspect identified as 24-year-old James Holmes in the parking lot.

Now, witness describes what happens in this terrifying scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO LCIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He came in and he started lighting a gas can, and he threw it into the crowd. At that point, he shot his first fire into the ceiling to scare everybody and they started scattering and mass chaos just happened. At that point he went from here to here and he just pointed the gun at me.

I was terrified so I just dove into the aisle and at that point he started to shoot people behind me and I had bullets that were, you know, on my forehead, burning my forehead and I just told myself I need to get out of there, I need to get out of here.

So, I just like stood there for a second (INAUDIBLE), I crawled on the ground and I just laid and waited for him to go up to the stairs. I said the second that he goes up the stairs to my friend, Corbin, we got to crawl, we got to get out of here. At that point, you know, I was trying to crawl. But then everybody was crawling back in and they're saying, don't go over there, he's going to shoot everybody that's trying to get out of the main doors. And he was.

And all I could hear would gunshot after gunshot, and just -- women and children are screaming and -- you know, and he had on a mask so I couldn't see his face.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Among those wounded was a 3-month-old baby. Now, hospitals say several of the wounded are in critical conditions. We are starting to learn more about the identities of some of those who were killed.

One of them was Jessica Ghawi. Now, she was in her 20s. She was an inspiring Colorado sports reporter and she narrowly escaped the Toronto mall shooting that happened last month. We're going to bring you more information about the victims as it comes in.

You can only imagine what they were feeling the terror inside of that theater. It's dark, you are watching a movie, all of the sudden, having to dodge bullets, trying to crawl to safety. I want to play more of this video. It is from a cell phone, and it is this shooting that is taking place, this rampage, this massacre. And this is the scene inside the center of a movie theater after this gunman opens fire.

(CELL PHONE VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

MALVEAUX: A suspect of the shooting is in police custody. Authorities are still trying to piece together what happened. Ed Lavandera, he is outside of this theater in Aurora, Colorado.

And, Ed, I understand that you have somebody who is with you who actually watched this unfold and can explain what they saw and what they heard.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Suzanne. We are several hundred yards from the movie theater where law enforcement agencies are doing the work, combing through the evidence and analyzing that scene.

But we have just met Chris Ramos (ph) who was in the movie theater, theater number nine, where the shooting took place. Where were you in the theater sitting? Just kind of set the scene for us.

CHRIS RAMOS, WITNESS: All right. So it was not towards exactly the middle of the theater, but it's a little bit like middle, but more down to the aisles. It was pretty close to the balcony side where the handicaps would sit, but it was probably five aisles up from there.

LAVANDERA: And how far into the movie were we?

RAMOS: It was 15 to 20 minutes into the movie. I have been hearing stuff and people saying that there was an action scene going on when the shooting happened. There was no shooting. It was Alfred talking to Bruce Wayne and in the middle of the conversation like, you just see like on the screens right here, the bright side of the door and the exit door opens up and then something comes up flying up through the air and then it hits like, hits people like sitting down.

And at first we thought it was part of the show, because we thought that people were trying to hype people up as to the new Batman movie and throwing stuff, because in the shadow, it looked like it could have been a bat -- like a toy bat or whatever.

And from there, right when that happened, there was an explosion and there was smoke coming out and a weird smell coming up.

LAVANDERA: How many rows from you?

RAMOS: Like three or four rows down.

LAVANDERA: And then seconds later, you start hearing the gunshots?

RAMOS: Seconds later, I was hearing fireworks, like it was a bam, bam. I thought it was fireworks and part of the show and somebody pulling a prank, but I definitely did not think that once the guy next to me actually got shot.

LAVANDERA: The guy next to you got shot.

RAMOS: The guy next to me got shot.

LAVANDERA: You told me he was there with his two daughters.

RAMOS: He was there with his two daughters, yes. He was watching movie. We were all just watching, and the guy, like it was a shock to see like the guy actually got shot, and blood splatter there, and it was just crazy. I didn't know what to do, but somehow I grabbed my little sister and I grabbed her and we just go down on the ground and hiding below like the chairs and the guy just standing right by the exit just firing away.

He is not aiming at a specific person, but aiming everywhere and trying to hit as many people as he can.

LAVANDERA: Was he saying anything?

RAMOS: He was not saying anything at all. He was completely quiet. He was just firing while everyone was like jumping over seats, crawling away just trying to escape, and you know, trying to survive the horrific event that was happening.

LAVANDERA: And the movie keeps playing as far as you can tell?

RAMOS: To be honest, I don't remember if the movie was playing. All I remember was like I was down on the ground. I was covering myself right when I was going up trying to see the guy, just like the tear gas was getting me and my eyes were watery, and I was like crying, like my throat felt weird and I feel like I was bleeding from my nose, like it was hard to breathe.

So I kept ducking and telling my sister to go forward, pushing her forward and guys and girls like running on top of me, or jumping away from the seats and trying to escape. The guy was firing like he -- the shooting lasted a minute or two minutes.

LAVANDERA: And then he just stopped?

RAMOS: He stopped. I'm guessing he ran out of ammo, he just stopped -- like he just stopped shooting. Right when he stopped shooting, he just gradually starts walking up like towards, like upwards to like away from the screen like nothing happened. Walking like casually, and everyone around is still trying to run like screaming and everything.

And right when the shooting stopped, I actually stood up, and I tried to get my sister and people are pushing me and I actually see bodies on the stairs, like an old lady like covered in blood like on the stairs, and people like sitting down like on the seats, like down or like over, like on the side, people are trying to jump over like the bodies were just there. There was blood everywhere.

LAVANDERA: Chris, I appreciate your staying on and I want to keep talking to you. We need to get back to Atlanta, because we've got a new development.

Suzanne, I am being told that we have a picture of the suspect, right?

MALVEAUX: We do as a matter of fact. We are getting more information. We also have a picture.

This is James Holmes. He's a resident of Aurora, Colorado. He is 24 years old.

We are getting more information about him. He is a PhD candidate of the University of Colorado. That is where we are getting this picture from, the University of Colorado.

We understand that he was a PhD candidate for neurosciences, and that he had enrolled in June of last year, 2011, and that he was in the process of withdrawing from the university. That is the information that we have.

He is 24 years old. He's a PhD candidate for neurosciences at the University of Colorado. This is what the alleged gunman looks like, 24 years old. This is the individual who allegedly was responsible for this massacre here.

This is a student. He is relatively young. You see he is smiling there.

And the information that we have is that he was in the process of withdrawing from the university. We don't know what the circumstances are around that. We don't know whether or not he has family in the area. We do know that investigators did search his apartment, the building that was four miles from the theater where he lived. That he allegedly said that he had explosives in the apartment. That it was booby trapped. There has not been anything of yet that has determined whether or not that was true.

But, you are looking at the face of someone who allegedly opened fire in this movie night, and responsible, allegedly responsible for a massacre of people who brought their families, brought their children. One person who had a 3-month-old baby in their arms who was in that theater at the time of the shooting.

Ed, I want to go back to you, if we can, because I know that you were talking to someone who was there, who witnessed everything, and just dramatically told us the story about what it was like.

Did he ever get a glimpse of his face? I know he had a mask on, that he was wearing black and people say that he had a bulletproof vest on as well.

LAVANDERA: You know, we were just, and that is my next question before we had to cut away there to get to that development in this story. So I'm going to try the catch up with him as soon as we wrap up here, but I have heard from the other witnesses who say that the suspect was wearing a gas mask, was dressed in very dark clothing, perhaps several people believed he was wearing some sort of a bulletproof vest.

But, you know, what I thought was chilling about his description about that scene is that how calm the shooter was throughout all of this, and that at that moment when he stopped shooting and the way that Chris Ramos was describing it, casually walking out of the theater as everyone else around him has been thrown into the chaotic and horrifying scene.

Chris was also telling me before we went on camera that he had come out and he was helping to tend to the wound of another person who was shot in the leg, that he had taken off his belt and strapped his belt on their leg, in those scenes afterwards, coming out of the movie theater and into the parking lot, you will hear of the stories of the people taking care of each other and trying to get through the initial treatment before paramedics and ambulances could arrive -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And we know, Chris, also, he was explaining how calm he was when he walked away. He had this really cool demeanor after all of this had just taken place. We know that the police also said that they apprehended him really without incident.

Do we know what the demeanor was, what he was like, how the police were able to identify who this was, and to arrest him?

LAVANDERA: Well, from everything that I have been able to gather in the fact that the suspect essentially kind of gave up to police from what Chris was telling me that all of this took place perhaps on the back side of the movie theater, that the exit door went directly outside. It was just to the right of the movie screen as people were watching the movie, and perhaps that took place in the area back here. From my understanding, that is the area where authorities took him into custody.

But for someone who was armed as heavily as he was and the fact that there was not any further incident is rather interesting. Perhaps that's all that the suspect wanted to do. Perhaps as Chris mentioned, he had run out of ammunition -- all of that is unclear at this point, clearly many of the questions that we still have at this point.

But as you can sense from hearing people like Chris Ramos talk some nine hours later, I think they are still trying to grasp and come the terms with what they witnessed so tragically in front of them. Many of these people felt as if they were trapped in that movie theater. In a matter of seconds, the gun fire erupted, they had nowhere to go.

MALVEAUX: And, Ed, explain to us the significance if you will -- because we saw a lot of cars in the parking lot behind the yellow tape and we assume that certainly the theater has been cleared out, but a lot of people were rushing out of that theater, and left a lot of belongings and didn't have a chance to get the keys to get their cars out essentially, that those people were running and were walking and are headed to an area just to try to debrief and to figure out what was going on.

LAVANDERA: Yes. My understanding is that the investigators when they got here and law enforcement officers when they got here, they were taking the witnesses away to another area for interviews in buses. So many of the cars perhaps some of the people who were killed last night or victims being treated in the hospitals, people who were taken away in other vehicles.

But, you know, clearly, this is kind of a snapshot in time from last night, all of the cars that are still very much in the parking lot last night coming to the movie theater for this midnight showing and this premier of the new Batman movie. So, everything is just kind of, you know, frozen there right now as law enforcement has cordoned off this massive parking lot.

This is as close as we can get. You can see that they have a command center set up back over there. You can see the law enforcement agencies, law enforcement officers going in and out of the movie theaters. They kind of process the crime scene inside theater number nine.

MALVEAUX: All right. Ed, we're going to get back to you. Also, we're going to take a quick break.

But when we come back, we're actually going to speak to another witness who was there, who saw the shooter and heard the noises, and experienced what so many people are shocked and at this tragedy today, this massacre that took place inside of a theater.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news. MALVEAUX: We have a picture of the suspect of this massacre. This is a picture from the University of Colorado in Denver. They are confirming that James Holmes. He is 24 years old. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado, a candidate for neurosciences.

And we are getting new info information about him, learning that he enrolled in the university June of last year, that he was in the process of withdrawing. We don't know what the circumstances are around that.

But this is the face. This is the face of the man who allegedly went into a family theater packed that was crowded, and the new Batman movie seemingly armed to the teeth with a some sort of smoke bomb that set off an explosive, and then went aisle, up the aisle picking up and plucking off, shooting, one by one, at random, people who went to see that movie late into the evening and early into the morning. That is the alleged suspect.

When this shooting first happened in theater nine, people in the adjacent theaters, they thought that the gunshots were part of the movie they were watching.

And William Washington, he was actually in theater eight, and that is next to theater nine where this shooting took place, and he is joining us on the phone.

William, first of all, explain to us how it was that you found out that there was something that was terribly wrong, something that was going on right next door.

WILLIAM WASHINGTON, WITNESS (via telephone): So, we were, our movie had started maybe 15 minutes prior to the one in theater nine. And our movie actually was in a shooting scene. It was at a scene where Anne Hathaway's character was in a shooting scene with the police. And so, there's these gunshots going throughout the theater.

And one of the shots, the first shot I heard just came out really loud, and at that moment in time, my hearing went out, and I could hear ringing. You know, I kind of nudged my brother jokingly, like saying, wow, the sound effects have gotten really good, and then we hear it again. It's still just loud. It's ear-piercing.

And then we turned our heads to the right, because we were on the left side of the theater, and theater nine was to the right of us, and you could see smoke coming into the room. And at that moment in time, we knew something was wrong. You know, there was rumblings going on. People thought somebody had set off a firecracker and people thought it was a part of the movie and like an effect, and everybody had this questions.

And then out of nowhere, you start to see people coughing and gagging. We're seeing people clutching their faces, and just heading for the doors. And at this point, I knew that something was definitely up and something was going wrong and people were heading to the exits, and at that point somebody rushes into our theater, rushes back into our theater and shouts, don't go into the lobby, he's got a gun.

That's when the panic just kinds of hits the theater, and people start to head back toward the back of the theater which led to a balcony. On the balcony both theater nine and theater eight emptied out into the same balcony. So basically, it is people from both theaters and it just looked like -- it was terrible.

I was seeing people with blood on their faces. There's people with, and there was a guy whose leg was looking like it was dangling and just bad.

MALVEAUX: How did you manage to get out of the theater eight? What did you do?

WASHINGTON: So we, like I said, the once we were told that there was a gunman outside, we all started to motioning towards the top of the stairs next to the projector, and that is what led us to a balcony, and we all just kind of waited on the balcony for two to three minutes just observing and everybody was confuse, and nobody knew in theater eight what was going on.

We are looking over the balcony and then two police officers rush in with shotguns and right then and there we knew that definitely something was wrong, something is terribly wrong. And then the police officers start to usher us out. There were two stairwells that led to the bottom of the -- I mean, at the bottom of the stairwells that led to the front door and they were all telling us, move, move, move and get us out.

And as soon as we got to that front door, there were police officers with guns aimed at the exits and once again, that was a clear sign that whatever was inside and we didn't know it was a gunman at the time was still inside.

MALVEAUX: Did you ever get a chance to see the gunman?

WASHINGTON: Not at all. There was a lot of confusion out there. A lot of us weren't even aware that there was a gunman, and there were rumblings that, you know, it was just a firecracker and some people thought it was a CO2 bomb I've heard. There was so many rumors going around, not a whole of people knew what was going on and it was really a few hours before any of us were informed as to what had taken place.

MALVEAUX: William, what did it smell like?

WASHINGTON: It burned. I can tell you as soon as we got to the balcony and you took a deep breath it just burned your lungs like nothing I had ever smelled before.

MALVEAUX: When you finally left the theater, what did you do? Did you call your parents? Did you try to reach anybody inside? Was there anybody missing who you had not seen?

WASHINGTON: I had my brother with me the entire time, my brother and I, and you know, the circumstances had resulted in my brother going with me rather than my wife, because my daughter was sick, and the first thing I did was, you know, I went straight home, and gave my daughter a big kiss and my wife a big hug.

MALVEAUX: When, did they realize just how close you had come to the kind of danger to that point where your life was in danger?

WASHINGTON: Well, I think that my wife definitely does. My daughter is 10-months old, and I'm going to make sure she doesn't realize it for a long time. But my wife, she was, she was well aware, you know, because the first thing I said and I called her and I said, honey, don't panic, and of course, the first thing she did was to panic but everything is OK and I'm just glad to be back at home.

MALVEAUX: William, we are so glad you are at home as well and safe and sound and we really appreciate the fact that you are sharing your story with us, and that you are with your family.

We are going to have more with mike brooks. He is going to be talking about the police investigation, the security aspects of all of this and what comes next. We're going to take a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

MALVEAUX: We have some more information about the apartment of the alleged shooter here, James Holmes.

We want to go the Susan Candiotti how's in New York.

We had seen earlier pictures, Susan, of this crane and investigators going into this building, three-story building four miles from the theater, and believed to be where he actually lives. Have they found anything so far?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we do know is this, the police chief has told the local reporters there on the scene that the suspect told them that he had set up a very sophisticated booby trap inside of the house or at least that is what they are saying that they have discovered a very sophisticated booby trap set up at the apartment, and exactly what this means, we don't know.

We do know this, according to a federal law enforcement official that the suspect did tell them that he had left an explosive device inside of the apartment. So, that is why, not surprisingly that they are taking so many precautions of approaching the apartment and you see them breaking apart the windows and taking them out, wearing protective gear, because they don't know what they will find when they get in there and start looking around. So, that's why they are approaching this scene very carefully and have evacuated the immediate area as well, keeping in mind that they want to keep the people back as far as possible.

They -- as soon as this happened this morning and they went over to the apartment building -- they of course cleared out that apartment building so that no one would be in possible danger.

MALVEAUX: How wide of an area has been evacuated? is it just that building or do they believe that potentially, because of the the possibility of explosive or booby trap they had to evacuate a large area?

CANDIOTTI: Well, Suzanne, that is a very good question and it is not clear to me how big of an area they have cleared out from that. I know that they have reporters standing some distance back. I have heard our people reporting earlier that there was traffic still going by. So I don't know whether there's been any kind of action taken to stop traffic or to divert traffic from the immediate vicinity of that apartment building.

MALVEAUX: Two questions, do we know where those people have gone? Those who are in the apartment building? And secondly, has anybody spoken out about who this guy is? Any neighbors, friends, anybody in that building who is able to give us some insight into who he is?

CANDIOTTI: Well, that is what our people on the scene are trying to gather that information as well to try to find out who this person is. Of course, you know, we are getting statements from his mother at this time who lives in California, and I believe that you have that information, but in terms of those who live nearby don't know. I do know this, you have been speaking about the photograph that we have released first, I believe, of the suspect in this case, Mr. Holmes, who as you know is said to be in the process off withdrawing from the University of Colorado where he had enrolled just last year 2011 and specializing or majoring in neuroscience. So we do know that much about him.

MALVEAUX: All right. Susan, we will get back to you as you have more information and I want to bring in Mike Brooks. He's from the HLN's law enforcement analysts, and Mike, a couple of things. When you take a look and we learn more information about this suspect a PhD candidate for neuroscience and does that tell you anything from the law enforcement side that you need to be focusing on?

MIKE BROOKS, HLN: Well, a really smart guy who could have the capability if he put his mind to it of making some kind of explosive material, and some kind of device, we don't know for sure if that is what they found there, but just to answer your question about the perimeter, just on HLN, a few moments ago before I came up here to speak to you, we had someone on who was there on the scene, and they said that law enforcement has moved the perimeter from that building they are concentrating on where his apartment is, they have moved the perimeter out, they've told all of the law enforcement officers to put their helmets on who are in that area and moved the public back.

MALVEUAX: What does that indicate to you?

BROOKS: That would say to me and from what we've been seeing earlier with them going through that window, and breaking that window out with the fire department tower ladder and the pipe poles that said to me that they believe there could be the possibility of some hazardous material in that apartment. Could it be a booby trap? Absolutely. That is why they would want to make entry through that window as a secondary means of entry, because if someone was going to normally go into an apartment, where would they go? They'd go through the front door. So why not come in through an alternate entry point as they were doing there. As they pulled the window out, I was watching, it looked like a special agent with his green vest with the FBI on and two other Aurora officers looking in there with either a camera or some kind of other technology to see what was inside of that apartment.

MALVEAUX: We are supposed to be getting a press conference in the next hour from the police department and they are supposed to be telling us some updates. What could they possibly learn from the time that they discovered this kind of the explosion and the shooting and what they might have gathered from the apartment building and now? Because we are just talking about hours.

BROOKS: Well, Holmes apparently told the officers after they took him into custody something about explosives. To what extent did he said what is in the apartment, they don't know. He also apparently said there might have been something in the car. They apparently have not found any explosives in his vehicle that was parked directly behind the theater, but we don't know exactly what they have found inside of that apartment, and what other subsequent things did they find when checking maybe his Facebook page, any social media sites looking at him, because you know, it's been a number of hours now, so that would say to me that local law enforcement and the FBI, they have probably gotten a lot more information than they had to go on right from the very beginning, but we don't know if Holmes is even cooperating with the law enforcement at this time.

MALVEAUX: When we listen to some of the witnesses, and they talk about what they smelled inside the theater and the, kind of, burning smell what does that indicate to you in terms of the kinds of things he was using whether it was pepper spray or smoke bombs or what kind of weapons that followed?

BROOKS: Great question. The guy you were just speaking to right before you went to Susan, he was talking about burning. Well, one of the first arriving officers there over the radio said he thought it smelled like, he said, OC which is pepper spray, and he asked to have the gas masks up there, because apparently it was that strong that he thought that they need the gas masks to go into that theater to help those people out of that theater, and we know that some of the people taken to the hospitals, they were going through some decontamination so they would not contaminate the emergency room they were being taken for treatment.

MALVEAUX: What's the next step here? What are they learning? What are they trying to learn about James Holmes?

BROOKS: Number one: Is he acting alone? They are going on the assumption that he was acting by himself but we still don't know for sure. What was his motive? We still don't know a motive of why he did this. What brought him in the last 24 to 48 hours to do this kind of thing? Because this didn't just happen spur of the moment. You could tell this was planned. And probably planned out for over some time. Did anybody else know about this? This is very, very early on in the investigation, and we don't know exactly what charges they are going to, you know, have against him right now, and we have 12 dead and 38 wounded. There's some other people who are in critical condition. Some going through surgery probably as we speak. He could be there for some local charges for first-degree murder and possibly some federal charges if they do find some kind of explosives. Where did he get the weapons? There's a lot of different things they are looking at right now, and I know that out there the task force with the FBI and the Aurora police part of they're working on it as we speak.

MALVEUAX: All right. Mike, we will get back to you with more details. We have to take a quick break and we will be right back with you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: The man accused in this deadly shooting, rampage in Colorado in the movie theater he is due in court on Monday. James Holmes, he is suspected of killing 12 people and wounding 38 others. A massacre. Police say he opened fire in a theater that was crowded with people watching the premiere of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. This is a time line of how this unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POLICE DISPATCH: 3:15, entry for a shooting at century theaters.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At 12:39 this morning, Aurora police began receiving multiple reports of a shooting at a theater.

POLICE DISPATCH: I want to dispatch any units.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Within minutes the police scanner turns busy as officers respond.

POLICE DISPATCH: The officers are requesting a bomb dog.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is the police dispatch. Police arrived within minutes. Witnesses say officers stormed the theater telling them to run.

POLICE DISPATCH: Command post should be at the Dillard's on north side of the Dillard's.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A command post was quickly set up in the theater at the shopping mall where police began interviewing hundreds of witnesses. Survivors tell police the gunman wore a gas mask, was clad in black, and released some type of canister before opening fire.

POLICE DISPATCH: At least five at the gateway to help triage the individuals.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The injured were transported to six hospitals. There were so many several had to be rushed to hospitals in police cars. Listen as dispatchers try to figure out who went where.

POLICE DISPATCH: The AP is as many as 19 victims. Medical -- we took a third to children's.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were families at this theater, families with children. There's a point in the flurry of the dispatches when the police must locate an injured pregnant woman.

POLICE DISPATCH: Can anyone advice where a pregnant woman was transported to that was out in front of the hospital? I have relatives here.

I took her to south, and the husband to south, and they are the ones missing like a 9-year-old child at the theater still.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Again, turning to the police scanner, we get an idea of how badly people were injured.

POLICE DISPATCH: She was shot in the face and shot in the chest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: While police and emergency workers transport victims, this next dispatch comes in. The audio is difficult to understand at times, but it is the police zeroing in on the suspect. You'll need to listen closely to this.

POLICE DISPATCH: I don't want there to be a cross fire situation. So we need to walk this guy out to the entrance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Up next, we are going to speak with one of the victims' friends who talks about her final tweets and what she experienced in that theater.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

MALVEAUX: We are learning more. We are starting to get confirmation of the victim's names. Mothers, fathers, friends, and students of this massacre. We understand as well that Mitt Romney is now speaking about this out of Bowe, New Hampshire. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN LIVE FEED)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Gather with a word of prayer. Our hearts break with the sadness of this unspeakable tragedy. Ann and I join the president and first lady and all Americans in offering our deepest condolences for those whose lives were shattered in a few moments, a few moments of evil in Colorado.

I stand before you today not as a man running for office, but as a father and grandfather, a husband, an American. This is a time for each of us to look into our hearts and remember how much we love one another and how much we love and how much we care for our great country. There's so much love and goodness in the heart of America.

In the coming days, we'll surely learn more about the lives that have been lost and the families that have been harmed by this hateful act. We'll come the know more about the talents and the gifts that each victim possessed, and we'll come to understand the hope and the opportunity that's been lost. Our hearts break for the victims and their families. We pray that the wounded will recover, and that those who are grieving will know the nearness of God.

Today we feel not only a sense of grief, but perhaps also of helplessness. But there is something we can do. We can offer comfort to someone near us who is suffering or heavy laden and we can mourn with those who mourn in Colorado. This morning Colorado lost youthful voices which would have brightened their homes, enriched their schools and brought joy to their families. Our prayer is that the comforter might bring the peace to their souls that surpasses our understanding.

The Apostle Paul explained, "blessed be God who comforteth us in all of our tribulations that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble." What we do know is how evil is overcome. We're seeing that greater power today in the goodness and compassion of a wounded community. Grieving and worried families in Aurora are surrounded with love today. And not just by those who are with them and holding them in their arms. They can also know that they're being lifted up in prayer by people in every part of our great nation. Now, and in the hard days to come, many every one of them feel the sympathy of our whole nation, and the comfort of a living God.

There will be justice for those responsible. But that's another matter for another day. Today is a moment to grieve and to remember, to reach out and to help, to appreciate our blessings in life. Each one of us will hold our kids a little closer, linger a bit longer with a colleague or a neighbor, reach out to a family member or friend. We'll all spend a little less time thinking about the worries of our day and more time wondering about how to help those who are in need of compassion most. The answer is that we can come together. We will show our fellow citizens the good heart of the America we know and love.

God bless you for being here and sharing together this moment of sorrow and God bless the United States of America.

Thank you.

MALVEAUX: You're listening to Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney out of Bow, New Hampshire, offering his prayers and condolences to the victims.

Earlier today we heard from President Obama in Fort Myers, Florida, as well, offering his prayers and condolences and saying this is a time for us to hold together a little bit closer our own children and our own families.

We are also getting a statement now. This is from the family -- it's a family statement of James Holmes. He is the suspect in this case. This statement is being read by Police Lieutenant Andra Brown, who came out of the investigation to read this statement from the family of the suspect. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. ANDRA BROWN, SPOKESWOMAN, SAN DIEGO POLICE: The family is asking for respect for their privacy, as well as that of the rest of the neighborhood at this point. There's quite a crowd out here and quite a bit of activity and disturbance that could potentially be caused for -- by the neighborhood here. So we're asking that all of the members of the media respect the privacy, of only of the family, but of the entire neighborhood.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: This family statement reads, "our hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and to the families and friends of those involved. We ask that the media respect our privacy during this difficult time. Our family is cooperating with authorities in both San Diego, California, and Aurora, Colorado. We are still trying to process this information and we appreciate that people will respect our privacy." This comes after a report that investigators are now talking to James Holmes' mother out of California.

Now, we are also starting to get confirmation of the names of some of these victims. If you can imagine what it was like to be in that theater. We are talking about families simply going out to have a good time, to enjoy each other's company. So this is mothers, fathers. These are buddies. These are friends. People who were just gathering for a night of entertainment.

Well, one of those people who was inside that theater is Jessica Ghawi. She is young. She is beautiful. She is full of life. And so full of life that she was tweeting before the movie started to talk about how much she was looking forward to this evening. And her friends, they say she had dreams of being a sportscaster. She loved hockey. And we have one of her friends on the phone. She is Natalie Tejeda.

And, Natalie, first of all, my condolences to you and to all of her friends and to her family. It must be so, so difficult for you right now. How did you find out that Jessica was in that theater?

NATALIE TEJEDA, FRIEND OF SHOOTING VICTIM: You know it's -- it was really quite shocking. I found out from her brother, who I also know as well. And I saw a post that he had made on Twitter just after, you know, when I started getting up and moving around, around 2:30 in the morning, you know. Like you, Suzanne, I also work in the broadcast industry and I get up really early because I work on our morning show here in San Antonio. And around 2:30 I saw what he said, had just (INAUDIBLE) probably the worst night of his life. And then about an hour later learned that his sister was, you know, fatally wounded in this shooting.

And, you know, I'd been watching the news of the shooting and it didn't really kind of put two and two together until I saw another link and her picture popped up and it was just heart wrenching. I mean -- when something like that happens, you don't fathom -- you'll see it and it seems so far away. You don't fathom that you would ever -- that you would ever know somebody in a disaster like that. And when you actually can put a face it to, it -- your breath and your heart drops and your chest -- your chest -- you're just hurting. It's hard.

MALVEAUX: All right. I can only imagine the kind of pain you're going through right now. Tell us a little bit about what she was like. TEJEDA: She was an amazing person. She had a wonderful smile, an infectious laugh. She was vivacious. She was feisty. You know, she was a feisty Texas redhead. She loved hockey, loved sports, you know. She had this aspiration to be a sportscaster. She worked for one of our local radio stations on an intern here and also at one of our TV stations as an intern here. You know, she -- she had dreams of doing great things. You know her motto was, I'm not here for second place, I'm not here for third place, she's like, I'm here to win. And we never had any doubts that she wasn't going to aspire to great things. And it's amazing that her life was cut so short so quickly.

MALVEAUX: I want to read for our viewers some of the twitterers -- the tweets, rather, that are coming out from her friends. She also went by the last name of Redfield (ph). And it says, "if you ever had any interaction with Jessica Redfield, you know the world is much worse off without her. She loved hockey and wanted to share that love with others. She rocked."

Tell us a little bit about -- I understand there was an experience she had before where she was -- almost her life was taken when there was a shooting at a mall in Toronto that she managed to escape.

TEJEDA: Yes. It was quite interesting. She had talked about -- she was dating a hockey player in Colorado and she had gone back to Canada to, I guess, to meet friends, family and back (INAUDIBLE) and had decided to go to the Eaton Mall to get some food from the food court. And she has a receipt from the mall that said about 6:20 (ph). And for some reason got a very strange feeling like, I just got to get out of here and get some fresh air. And so she goes outside. And the next thing she knows, she sees like -- and people streaming (INAUDIBLE) fire, emergency personnel, this kind of stuff. And she asked, what's going on? And they're like, somebody opened fire in the food court. And she later found out that at 6:23 p.m., three minutes after she had left, somebody had opened fire right where she had just been standing. I mean, it --

MALVEAUX: It just -- it takes your breath away to hear that. She wrote an article, I understand, about the shooting. And I'm going to read a bit of it. She says, "I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don't know when or where our time on earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath. I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing."

Do you think she really felt that? That that was something that she took away from every single moment?

TEJEDA: If you could see just the splattering of photos on her FaceBook page showing that she absolutely lived life to the fullest, because she enjoyed her life. I think she did look at life like you never known when it's going to end, so you better have fun while you're doing it. You better laugh. You better love. You better enjoy your friends and your family and just relish in the moment. And she absolutely did. I have no doubt that she was just going to be a phenomenal person, whether a sportscaster, a wife, a sister, you know, a daughter. She did everything wonderfully. And this world is going to be a much sadder place without her, you know. And I'm grateful that her friend, Brent (ph), survived, you know, and he's doing better. But I am really going to miss her a lot, Jessica. We are really going to miss Jessica.

MALVEAUX: Natalie, thank you so much. Again, our thoughts and our prayers to Jessica and her family.

We're going to have more after the break.

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