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College Town: Mass Murder Near UC-Santa Barbara Campus

Aired May 24, 2014 - 21:00   ET

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

REPORTER: Sheriff, having reviewed the case you're talking about now and knowing what happened here, is there anything in hindsight you think your agency didn't do that should have been done? Was there anything you regret?

SHERIFF BILL BROWN, SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: Well, I'm not going to -- I'm not going to go become play Monday morning quarterback at this point. We're still investigating this incident and exactly what happened in interaction that they had. But you've got to understand that this is a fairly routine-type of call that is quite commonplace and the deputies who are well-trained and are adept at handling these types of calls did contact this gentleman in an effort to determine whether or not his welfare was imperiled and did not believe for the reasons that they had as a result of that contact that he required any further care.

So, I'm not going to second-guess them at this point.

(INAUDIBLE)

REPORTER: What can you tell us about the events that happened at the apartment complex?

BROWN: As you are aware in the manifesto, he lays out a plan on what he intended to do. I will, without getting into too much detail, I will say that three of the -- there are three people that were murdered in the apartment. It appears as though that happened, you know, prior to him going on this mobile shooting rampage. The three male victims were apparently stabbed repeatedly with sharp objects, and it was a -- a pretty horrific crime scene.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: The question is did he shoot himself or was he shot by the sheriff's deputies. It appears that he took his own life at this point.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: We're still in the process of determining exactly who those people are and making positive identifications and notifying their next of kin, so I can't comment to that question right now.

(INAUDIBLE) BROWN: We're going to be looking at any and all evidence that we can gather. We also are asking anyone -- you know, as you can imagine, we've interviewed a huge number of witnesses and there are still probably many more witnesses who we have not yet been in contact with. And if anyone was privy to any information about this case or if anyone actually witnessed any aspect of this rampage that occurred last night, we encourage them to contact the Santa Barbara County sheriff's office.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: I can't comment on that right now, Nick.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: The victims who were killed, the first three were killed in the suspect's residence. The next two were killed outside the Alpha Phi sorority, and the remaining fatally injured victim was killed on Pardell at a business, as a delicatessen.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: Three in the apartment, two at the sorority, one at the delicatessen. That's six by my math and then we had one additional the suspect. So, we had a total of seven fatalities.

(INAUDIBLE)

REPORTER: What was the timeline of when these guns were purchased? (INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: All three -- all three weapons were purchased prior to his contact. So, he had -- well, you've got to understand that when a firearm is purchased, there is a check run on people who purchase the firearm. But if a person has not been institutionalized or has not been taken against their will and put on a hold, that information is not entered into the database and is not disqualifying information for someone purchasing a firearm legally.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: We did not have any 911 calls related to the stabbing and we subsequently found the victims while we were in the process of investigating the case and went to the suspect's residence.

I'm going to take one more question here.

(INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: We have not been in contact other than recently other than last night, we were in contact with his parents and interviewed them and notified them of his death.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Appreciate it.

(END PRESSER COVERAGE) DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN ANCHOR: All right. So, we want to recap a lot of interesting details, things now lining up in this tragic rampage last night.

We now know that three people, three men were killed at the apartment of the suspect Elliot Rodgers. Two women were killed outside of a sorority. One young man killed at a deli and at that deli, Rodger actually got out of the car and opened fire. Catherine Brianne Cooper, Veronica Elizabeth Weiss, Christopher Ross Michael-Martinez, those are the names of the victims, all of them, U.C.-Santa Barbara students that were attending college there.

The guns, three of them, all purchased more than a year ago according to the time line from federally licensed dealers in three separate cities. (AUDIO GAP) millimeter -- there were two Sig Sauer 9 millimeter semiautomatic handguns and one Glock. The amount of ammunition startling. For the Sig Sauers, 34 loaded magazines each with ten rounds in them. For the Glock, seven loaded magazines with 10 rounds inside of them. The sheriff made clear that, in fact, because this young man was not institutionalized, there was nothing that showed up on his chart saying that he was prevented from purchasing the guns. Most interestingly, Elliot Rodger apparently had contact with sheriff's deputies three times in the last year starting in July 2013.

One time, he claimed that he was the victim of an alleged assault, however, it turned out that he was apparently the alleged aggressor and so, sheriff's deputies dropped that.

In January, he accused his roommate of steal $22 worth of candles, a charge he pursued. Keep in mind, this is somebody from a very privileged background but he brought charges against the roommate.

The final incident, April 30th, 2014, that is just 25 days ago. Sheriff's deputies at the request of the family went to his home and paid a welfare check on the gunman. Apparently the gunman talked his way out at the time saying that he was having difficulties with his social life, that he would not be returning to school. The deputies did not pursue because they said he was courteous, polite, and shy.

So, again, points that have been made by our panel, which was this was somebody clever enough to talk his way out of any potential problem. We're also told the number of patients, four patients, have been treated and released. Seven were transferred to a trauma center. Two are in good condition. Three are in fair condition. And then there are two that are in serious condition.

A lot of information. I want to bring back our panel.

Jeff Gardere, Lou Palumbo, Holly Hughes, Brian Claypool. And we're going to be going to Kyung Lah and Sara Sidner, momentarily.

But, Jeff, I want to start with you. Everything you heard just now, what does it tell us about this young man?

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Again, I don't want to get into finger pointing. You've been very clear about, and I agree with you. But I think that the red flags were missed. A member of our panel talked about that, the red flags were there.

The July 21st, treated for injuries. He was actually the instigator. He talks about that in the manifesto, went and started a fight in the frat house from what we can tell from this.

FEYERICK: Yes.

GARDERE: January 15th, stealing three candles, you made a great point. He comes from a privilege -- three candles. This is that paranoid personality we're talking about. He made a citizen's arrest, which tells me two incidents in a row he was very, very aggressive, delusionally aggressive.

And then, April 30th, a check on his welfare. Again, we don't want to do arm chair quarterbacking. The sheriff's deputies did the best they could. But there was not a mental person involved in that, and that's the hole in that system right then and there.

FEYERICK: And that's something that could have been the key that everybody wanted. Again, we always look for some possible solution.

We're going to come back with much, much more.

But, first, we're going to take a very quick break right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: And we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. We have the very latest on the shooting rampage that took place in a college town Isla Vista, right near the University of California-Santa Barbara. We're now learning that at least three of those that were killed were, in fact, students at that college. There are three others who have yet to be identified. They were killed at the beginning.

We were told that Elliot Rodger, the suspect named as the killer stabbed these three men repeatedly. We're not sure whether they're not being identified because they can't make an identification, or because they have not yet notified those closes to them.

I want to go back to our panel and talk about a lot of the things the sheriff, Bill Brown, just discussed with us.

And, Lou, let's talk to you first about all of this. You know, when you think about the number of guns that he was able to purchase, three guns from three different locations and the fact he had a total, total of 41 magazines with ten bullets each, he had more than 400 bullets on him.

What does that tell you?

LOU PALUMBO, RETIRED LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY: This man was intent on harming a large number of people, without question. That would be the only reason why he would carry these highly sophisticated firearms with as many rounds of ammunition to make them operate.

FEYERICK: The first killings, which apparently took place at his apartment. We don't know who the men were, we don't know their ages, but these were stabbings. They didn't say knives. This is what I found interesting. They were stabbed repeatedly with sharp objects. They didn't even use the word knife.

You know, what does that suggest to you, Holly Hughes?

HOLLY HUGHES, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: They haven't -- because the autopsies aren't complete they haven't been able to identify what the weapon was, and they'll be able to do that.

But when you stab somebody, it is up close and personal. That is a rage. And when the sheriff was describing that scene, he said it is a horrific scene meaning there are multiple, multiple stand wounds, you've got the splatter coming off of those objects whether it was ice picks, whether there was a fight and he broke a mirror and began to stab them with piece of the mirror.

I think what we're going to find out is this is probably just an absolute nightmare inside of that apartment and we know he did have roommates because one of the prior incidents with police was that he had reported a roommate for stealing some candles. And he himself --

FEYERICK: Twenty-two dollars worth.

HUGHES: Right, $22 worth. And he swore out the citizen's warrant. He did the citizen's arrest and pushed it forward such that the district attorney down there actually had to file charges because he had this man claiming to be a victim.

FEYERICK: And, Brian Claypool, the first interaction -- one second -- the first interaction that he had was back in July 2013. Brian Claypool, apparently he made up charges that he was the one who had been a victim of an assault when deputies found out that, in fact, he was the aggressor. What does that tell you about him?

BRIAN CLAYPOOL, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It tells me that he's delusional and Jeff makes a good point too about the fact that anybody would file a report about stolen candles. I mean, you have to connect the dots, Deborah. And it's all about the red flags. That's what I talked about earlier.

The red flags have been very apparent here. I've dealt with law enforcement before with mental health suspects. You have to call in -- a lot of law enforcement has what they call a CIT team, critical intervention team.

When you get a call on a welfare check you have to call in a mental health specialist. If you don't it's like saying, somebody has a drinking problem, can you go interview them and ask them whether they have a drinking problem. What do you think they're going tell you? They're going tell you, I don't have a drinking problem, what are you talking about?

FEYERICK: And I got to -- yes, go ahead, go ahead.

PALUMBO: You know, guys, can I just say one thing, Deborah here, very quickly?

FEYERICK: OK, Lou. Go ahead. Jump in.

PALUMBO: It was indicated in this press conference that multiple mental health professionals had some form of interaction with this young man.

FEYERICK: Yes, that's correct.

PALUMBO: It's difficult for me to understand that none of them were able to pick up on this anger issue among other things. And think all of us have been around people with anger issues. You almost can't mask it.

And in response to remarks Brian had made earlier about any of these textbook delusional, you know, characteristics, you know, the purpose of having a mental health professional evaluate you is to be able to get through the veneer, right, that you might put forth. Everybody wants you to see what they want you to see, but mental health professionals are supposed to be able to detect beyond the veneer, and that's why I think this investigation is going to blossom like nobody's business. And we're going get into what really went wrong here, and it has a lot more to do with perhaps the mental health professionals than it does anyone else because the face (INAUDIBLE) of the family.

FEYERICK: OK. Well, let me just stop you right there.

Well, that's correct. But I have to -- I have to give credit to Jeff Gardere. He's the one who called it. He's the one who said that, in fact, this young man was smart enough -- in fact, he was 140 pages smart to create a story in which he could talk his way out of anything. Not a psychosis, not rambling, not crazy, but definitely a personality disorder.

Jeff, when you think about this, you know, look -- if he was seen by a variety of mental health professionals, which is what the sheriff said -- at what point could they have intervened? At what point do you think that anger issues -- look, they look at the whole picture, is somebody angry, is somebody delusional, is somebody suicidal, is somebody homicidal?

Could they have detected something and then alerted it, alerted somebody as we sort of saw right in the Aurora case if I'm not mistaken?

GARDERE: Right, unless he said it was a direct threat where he was going to hurt someone or himself or there was an active psycho kiss, there's not much they can do. They are mandated to say something if they think there's a danger to self or other. And what may have happened, I don't know who the professors are hat he saw, and I'll be doing some digging on that myself, to let you know exactly who he was seeing as far as the discipline, but I suspect, as I said earlier, that this was a progressive problem through the years and the parents couldn't handle it any longer and then it exploded into this violence within the past year. It just got out of their hands.

FEYERICK: Yes. It really seems that way.

PALUMBO: Jeff --

FEYERICK: I mean, when you think about the fact that he had three separate incidents starting back in July 2013 or the last one in which he said he was not going to be returning to school. Again, a 22-year- old man going to a community college when he had a pretty grandiose sense of who he was.

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back on the other side we are going to be bringing back our entire panel. We're also going to speaking to the head of the University of California-Santa Barbara president, Janet Napolitano.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: We're joined now by Janet Napolitano. She's president of University of California system. She's the previous secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 2013.

First of all, thank you so much for joining us. Our condolences to the entire U.C. community.

One thing I want to ask, three -- we know that at least three of the dead are students. How is the college going to deal with this given that they've got finals, they've got graduation? What's going to happen?

JANET NAPOLITANO, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SYSTEM (via telephone): Well, Chancellor Henry Yang is there with the community right now. Obviously, we're bringing in counselors and support, faculty and staff to work with our students at the university. But no doubt this is a terrible few days here for the University of California-Santa Barbara and it's just a terrible thing that happened.

FEYERICK: You know, when you think about this, look, one of the areas that he targeted was a sorority. Another was a stretch that's off campus, granted, but still frequented by a lot of students that go to your universities.

Is there -- thinking about it, do you think should have been or should you have certain security measures in these areas to at least keep an eye, or do you think it was sufficient?

NAPOLITANO: Well, let's not do the Monday morning quarterbacking quite yet. Isla Vista, which is where these shootings occurred, is a community that's adjacent to the community, not part of the university's property per se, but clearly the perpetrate here was targeting the university and its students. We take that very, very seriously. FEYERICK: OK. And you listened to the press conference. What jumped out at you? I mean clearly as you're experienced with homeland security, you had exposure to a lot of various tragedies, a lot of various attacks. How do you process this one?

NAPOLITANO: Well, this -- when I was secretary, we had the Boston marathon, we had Newtown, just to name a few. These rampages are becoming far too frequent in my opinion, and the loss of life is just adding up. These are young bright lives. Our students are among the best in the country, and the loss of life is palpable.

FEYERICK: And we know that you are very involved obviously in terms of reassuring the public during the sandy hook massacre and the Boston marathon bombing. We saw you out there as well.

Do you think just in looking at all of this, when you have somebody who's young, somebody who's part of the campus or part of the university system, was there enough coordination of intelligence of the police and the deputies with even local security on campus? Look, arguably one could say this could have easily have happened on campus.

NAPOLITANO: You know, perhaps. And, again, you know, that's difficult to say, but when you look at facts as relaid by the sheriff this evening -- and I thought he gave a very good, very detailed accounting of the sequence of events here.

These are university campuses. They're not armed camps. These are open communities. Yes, we have law enforcement. Yes, we coordinate with the sheriff's department and we will continue to do so.

But let's deal immediately now with the victims, the families, those who were injured and make sure they're getting best care possible.

FEYERICK: And that's clearly a significant concern right now. There were so many young people. Clearly, they will have known some of the victims. There will be funerals that are taking place. How do you normalize the campus so late really in the year when kids really are focused on exams and also graduating to go start their lives? How do you normalize the situation if you can?

NAPOLITANO: Well, I don't know if normalize is the right word to use here. I think what you do is provide support, you provide assurance. Our students are very intelligent, they're very resilient, and we'll provide them with whatever additional help they'll need.

FEYERICK: OK. And right now, I assume usually in a case like this, you've got mental health professionals who come in. You've got people who -- is there going to be some extra security on campus just to create peace of mind more than anything?

NAPOLITANO: Yes. All of those things, you're exactly right. All of those things are happening. You know, this is a 10-university system. So, several of our schools are already through with finals and graduation and they are offering and we're mustering some of their personnel as well to go down to Santa Barbara. FEYERICK: Look, I completely agree with you. Monday morning quarterbacking doesn't do much good. But would you consider putting extra security, for example, around sororities, fraternities, that aren't on campus, but clearly are part of the university culture?

NAPOLITANO: Well, there is security there. I don't want to suggest that there is not. And obviously when we do the after incident review and looked at everything that happened, if there are things that can or should be done differently, of course, we would do that.

But right now, I don't know that to be the case, nor do I know of the relevant facts. Again, my day has been taken up, quite frankly, in dealing with the students and with the university and our leadership, so that we are offering that campus everything we can. FEYERICK: And in terms of parents, just final word, how do you reassure parents? What do you tell them about their children right now?

NAPOLITANO: I would say just what I said, that first these are smart, very resilient students. To the extent they need additional help, support, and/or additional security for the time being, all of those things are being provided. Santa Barbara is a very safe campus as are all of our campuses. This, however, was a terrible tragedy, and I hope one not to be repeated.

FEYERICK: All right. Secretary Napolitano, now president of the University of California system, we appreciate it. And once again, our deepest and most sincere condolences to the entire college system and all those affected by this. Our hearts go out to you. Thank you for speaking with us this evening.

NAPOLITANO: Thank you very much.

FEYERICK: And coming up, video you're going to see only here on CNN. When Elliot Rodger, the gunman, opened fire, it was all caught on tape. That exclusive video from our correspondent Kyung Lah coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: Ten locations, 12 crime scenes, that's where law enforcement officers are gathering details, putting together the forensics, gathering evidence, that what happened on Friday night on the streets of Isla Vista, California, a college town. One of those locations, a convenience store.

Take a look. Surveillance cameras capture the moments gunshots were fired into the buildings.

CNN's Kyung Lah is there. She obtained the exclusive video only seen on CNN.

Kyung, we're watching part of it. We're not watching the worst part. Walk us through it.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're not watching the worst part because it's simply too gruesome to look at, and the owner of I.V. Deli, who gave us this video, this is his surveillance video, and there are multiple angles of it, you can see the moment when one of the victims, UCSB student Christopher Michael-Martinez when he walks in and he's actually shot and killed. It's really frightening.

What it givens you a sense of what is actually happens there, you can see the bullets hitting the -- one of the windows, one of the coolers that you open to get drinks. You can see it shattered. You can see people crouching in fear. You get a sense of how frightening it was and how many bullets were actually use.

There were a number of bullets that we could see, Deb. When we walked through the store you can see bullets through the window, but also shattering parts of the county as well. It's really extraordinary because it sort of gives you a picture of the violence that these people lived through.

FEYERICK: Right. And interesting also, for our viewers, if you look at the top of the screen, it's the fourth panel that is shattered out that gets hit and then that girl -- I think it's girl in front there. It's interesting that the first thing, she reaches for her cellphone not even ducking behind what you would thing would be obvious cover, sort of stands there in the middle and she pulls out her cell phone video.

I'm so struck by what Christopher-Martinez's father, the grief, the anger, his voice when he slammed politicians, slammed the NRA, saying, their rights, their rights, what about Christopher's right to live and we believe that given that he was the one who had gone out to simply get something to eat, that he was the victim killed at this deli, correct?

LAH: That is correct. And you see it. I saw it and that's part of the reason why the owner of the surveillance video didn't want to release it because he heard the father. He knows what the father is going through and he doesn't want to add to the pain.

So, that is certainly something that people are thinking about, the young man who lost his life and everyone who was in that store was traumatized. You mention that young woman. That young woman pulled out her cell phone to call 911.

A lot of people in the store started running to the back exit. She stayed there. You can actually see her lift her arm to try to reach out to ask Christopher how he's doing, is he OK? And she's -- there's no audio. We can't hear what she's saying, but she's very visibly trying to help him and on the video where you see him bleeding, everyone there is trying to help him as well. So it's a community that's trying to recover in a moment of trauma and still trying to recover right now, Deb.

FEYERICK: And just so I'm clear on this, Christopher -- was Christopher at the door? The perspective that we're looking at, was she in front of the door there? Would the counter have been to the left of the entrance? LAH: You're exactly right. The counter was to the left of the entrance. And the angle that we can't show you, it is pointing directly at the door. The door opens. You can see a number of people walk in. They start to react to the bullets flying.

And then you can see him come in. He's the last one. He's struck twice and then he falls. But he had just come into the store and it appears that he was hit from the back.

FEYERICK: Right. And that's exactly what his father said. He had just gone out because he was hungry. He was hungry. He wanted to get something to eat and now he is dead and it could have been anyone. It could have been anyone doing something as routine and regular as that.

All right. Kyung Lah, we know you're going to be getting other I have owes, angles. We want to be clearly sensitive of everyone watching. This is very grisly. It's tragic and sad. It's just sad.

Kyung Lah, thanks. We'll check back in with you in just a little bit.

Right now, I want to bring the panel back into the conversation to talk about this. Jeff Gardere, Holly Hughes, Lou Palumbo, Brian Claypool.

Jeff, I keep coming back first, because there's so much that I'm trying to understand and I think that everybody is trying to understand about this, especially how this played out. You had this young man where he began his rampage in his apartment with a stabbing, stabbing three people. He then got in his car and began shooting.

And one thing that Kyung Lah did not mention he was actually out of his car when he opened fire into that deli. What does this tell you about the way he was acting, what he was doing? It sounds like he was having this game in his head.

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Exactly. He seemed like he was invincible. Indestructible. And that's one of the things he said in his manifesto, that he was going to show everyone that he was a god. He had ultimate power.

But it is like a video game. I won't mention the specific video game. My children have played it. You can stab, you can punch, you can kick, you can kill, you could drive a car, run over people, get into gunfights with cops.

And this young man was very much into the videos and I wonder how that entered his subconscious and dictated a lot of what happened in this particular night especially since he had such a warped mind.

FEYERICK: Do you think -- and for example, I don't want to blame video games either.

GARDERE: Of course not.

FEYERICK: We know there are suggestions that it contributes to a violent behavior, but could this 22-year-old, no friends, frustrated with women, confused about possibly even his own sexuality because he wants women, he just hates them to death and wants to put them in concentration camps and possibly starve them to death.

Was this game -- with somebody with such a personality disorder, was he playing this out in his -- has he just left reality? How do you describe it?

GARDERE: Well, this is an individual -- look, we all know a lot of kids play video games. They don't do things like this, like this young man did. However, it's the deadly mix. You get someone with a severe personality disorder, severe mental illness, and now this becomes their reality, their virtual reality. And then they can't separate that virtual reality from our reality and it becomes what they do in order to access the world in the most destructive way.

I'm sure that was part of the fuel to his fire and was perhaps responsible for some of the ideas he had as to how he was going to commit this pure mayhem, deadly mayhem.

FEYERICK: Absolutely. This rampage.

Lou Palumbo, he bought three different firearms, bought them at three different gun stores, all of them federally licensed, which means that there would have been a background check. According to the sheriff, he bought them about a year ago before the first interaction he had with sheriff's deputies. I don't -- what do you make of that -- of that? Most people don't all of a sudden get this fixation and say, I think I'm going to go to three different places and buy three different guns and I'll have them checked, you know, by federal background checks.

What do you make of that?

LOU PALUMBO, RETIRED LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT: I think that the fact that he made a decision to go out and acquire firearms is an indication that his condition, his hatred, his anger was consistently growing. But you know, Deborah, this case isn't an anomaly. And that's the most tragic part.

FEYERICK: That it is not one is what you're saying.

PALUMBO: Exactly.

FEYERICK: Yes.

PALUMBO: There's something that's happened to the psyche of young Americans. There's a much, much bigger question here, and we're focusing on one individual.

But I think we need to understand and remember something. This isn't an isolated instance, any longer.

FEYERICK: Yes.

PALUMBO: Something has happened to that generation of children. He's in the same demographic. We can talk about his particular set of circumstances, we can talk about gun control, we can address any number of topics, but we need to look at the big picture and figure out what's going on with our children.

Any way you cut it, at 22 years old, he's a kid. He's a young kid.

FEYERICK: No question. Lou, I'm going to cut you off just very quickly. One thing I do want to say, I want to defend the generation because there were some people there who really reached out and tried to help some of the others who were slaughtered. It's an exemption. We're talking about the, what, the 1 percent.

We're going to take a quick break. We're going to have a lot more coming up right after. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: All right. So, I want to fill you in what we have learned from Santa Barbara authorities. A short time ago, there was a press conference with the sheriff, Bill Brown, on this deadly rampage that happened Friday night by a single man in California. The name that has now been released, as we confirmed earlier by his family, Elliot Oliver Rodger, 22 years old, a student at Santa Barbara City College.

People say that beginning Friday, he killed six people, stabbing at least three and shooting three others, as he went through a violent car chase through this community town and shooting at 10 different locations. Rodger not a stranger to Santa Barbara law enforcement, they had interactions with him on at least three occasions. Deputies either fielding complaints from him or finally just 25 days ago called to his residence by his family to perform a welfare check, and guess what? He talked his way out of it, told those deputies that he was fine and going to leave his community college and not return, but he was having social problems and that's why he wasn't coming back.

Now, when Elliot Rodger's body was found in the car, more than 400 rounds of ammunition loaded into more than 40 clips. Police say it's impossible to know how many more people could have been hurt or killed had he not been stopped.

I want to clarify. There were more than 40 magazines, he fired many of those bullets. About the weapons -- three handguns, two Sig Sauers, one 9 millimeter Glocks. Sheriff's office (AUDIO GAP) they were all bought legally at federally registered, federally licensed dealers and they were registered in his name, Elliot Rodgers.

Sara Sidner in Santa Barbara, Kyung Lah in Isla Vista. And, Sara, the sheriff confirmed that Rodger was dead when they found him.

Is there still a question as to whether deputies are the ones who pulled or fired the fatal shots?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I asked that question actually to the sheriff and the sheriff responded by saying that it is believed he took his own life. He mentioned that the sheriff's deputies at tone of these 10 teams were able to shoot into the car and hit him in the hip but they believe that he, Rodger, actually shot himself in the head. That is the preliminary investigation and that is what they believe happened.

They did take him out of the car. They said he was clearly dead at the time. You mentioned how long this went on. And when you start listening to the investigators and to the sheriff as to how all this went down, all the different places he went.

We know now that not just seven people were injured, but 13 people were injured, most of them shot. Eight of them shot. Other people were hit by his car.

He was on -- clearly on a rampage trying to kill. Every time he came in contact with deputies, every time they got close, he shot towards them. Deputies shot back. They ended up hitting him in the hip but ultimately, the sheriff says they believe he did take his own life.

FEYERICK: Yes, that's an excellent point that you raise and that is he was shooting back. So, clearly, he was engaged. This goes into the whole theory that he felt he was god. He felt he was omnipotent, and that he was exacting revenge on all these people who had done him wrong.

But interestingly, the shot that was fired and hit him in the hip, the deputies, they were on foot. The ones firing on him weren't in cruise cars. They were on foot, correct?

SIDNER: Yes, first, they were in cruise cars. Some were on foot when they finally got close to him. I do want to mention something else that we found really interesting. There were three other contacts, as you mentioned, three other contacts with authorities, with Rodger. And Rodger, the first one, he said that he was attacked. But investigators said that they looked into that, and it seemed that he was actually the aggressor and there were no charges filed there.

The second one, he actually made a citizen's arrest of a roommate for $22 worth of candles. That person was booked into the jail, according to the sheriff.

And lastly there was a call from his family members to the sheriff who said, look -- or to the authorities -- and they said can you go check on him? They checked on him and he was able to talk through it and say everything's fine. I'm OK.

So, those were the three contacts between him and law enforcement authorities. All three times he got out of it. There were no other charges filed. This time he ended up dead and ended up killing, according to investigators, seven people.

FEYERICK: And also, Sarah just quickly, the first location is his own apartment, three men stabbed to death. Do we know the whereabouts of this roommate that apparently he brought the charges against in January?

SIDNER: Well, what we do know from the sheriff himself, he said those three roommates were killed inside Rodger's apartment. So, that is why we were all wondering why we weren't hearing about this crime scene, why no one called it in. It appears that everyone was dead inside the apartment except for him and that's why we didn't hear about that initially.

A gruesome scene, obviously, inside of that apartment, and then you have all the other cases throughout this ordeal. Ten different places where something unfolded and then we know we saw a witness who talked about three girls outside of the sorority and he was right, the gentleman we spoke with earlier, the student who saw those three girls, two of them -- one of them dead, one of them dying. He was correct, two people did actually die, two of the girls died. One of them has survived, according to the sheriff's department.

FEYERICK: And we can see the wide shot right there, you can see, that is outside of the Alpha Phi sorority.

Sara Sidner, thank you so much. Stand by.

Kyung Lah, you have obtained some dramatic video and it shows one of the locations where this gunman actually got out of his car and opened fire. Describe the video for us.

LAH: This is the third location. You have already heard Sarah talk about the apartment. That's where it began the stabbing of the three victims. Then, the sorority, the shooting of the two victims there, the third who was injured.

This is the third location, the I.V. Deli. And according to that press conference, what the officials say happened is that the gunman got out of his vehicle. On the surveillance tape, we do not see the gunman. We do not see him enter the store. But what we do see are the bullets flying into the store.

In video that is simply too gruesome to show you, you can see one of the victims, Christopher Martinez, actually get shot. At least twice, it appears, somewhere on his torso, in the back and you see him go down. The deli did show us that but they did not want it to get out because of the anguish that his family is going through.

But what we can see in that video is you see people are crouching. The bullets are hitting the cases and they actually shatter some of the glass. When we walked around the deli you can see bullet holes in the counters. There was an extraordinary amount of gunfire and it was targeted -- he was aiming for people -- Deb.

FEYERICK: And we saw an image of a young man. And I want to clarify for our viewers, that is Christopher Martinez. This young man here, a picture of him that was taken, provided by the family, his father clearly in anguish. And he pointed out something so dramatic, Kyung, and that is this young girl inside that store, she is actually -- she is so brave. She is reaching for him, after he gets shot.

Describe what you know.

LAH: You never know how you're going to react to something unfolding until you're in it. And this woman is really the picture of someone who is really putting her life on the line to try to help someone's who's probably very close to her age. She is reaching out and dialing 911. There are bullets flying over her head. She is not running. She is staying put, trying to call the authorities and in the angle that we cannot show where you see Martinez lying on the ground, there are his friends who are around him trying to resuscitate him. They won't leave his side.

So, it's in that tiny microcosm of that deli, there are real signs of bravery and community even as the bullets flying over their heads.

FEYERICK: Yes. And not only that, signs of real humanity, the humanity that this gunman said didn't exist. Well, they proved him wrong.

We are going to have some final thought on a tragic day.

Sara Sidner, Kyung Lah, thank you so much for joining us.

My panel is going to be back with me.

There have been so many of these shootings, warning signs that we should be looking, maybe for shooters.

Lou, is there anything we can learn from investigations like these?

PALUMBO: You know, the investigations are just the follow up to this -- to these carnages. Really what we have to start to do is try to understand what exactly is going on in our society. You know, what is going to fix or what is going to change in our culture to stop these episodes.

I mean, you know, the more you do investigations, the better your skills are. You know, you learn things from them from an investigative standpoint, but we are looking for a remedy to prevent these things. And as there is no such thing as single causality --

FEYERICK: Right.

PALUMBO: -- there is not a single answer to correct this.

FEYERICK: We can talk but we have to take action. Lou Palumbo, thank you.

Holly Hughes, the murder rate has been cut in half since the early '90s, but there had been no declines in mass shootings. What are your thoughts?

HUGHES: You know, I'm with Lou. You keep saying and echoed it many times throughout the night I don't want to blame anybody. But we need to do something, Deborah.

We need to blame something and something is a breakdown in our system. It's about time we point fingers and not at individual people, but what is the problem in our system? Where is the break down?

This young man had never been hospitalized. He didn't pop when they ran a federal criminal background for him to get a gun. So, what we feed to do is say all right, we know we can't get multiple -- we know there is a pharmacological database already, because you can't go to Krueger and get, you know ,a prescription for one thing and then run down to a different doctor and get a prescription and take it to public to get for the same thing. Those are all linked.

If you start trying to do that, they know about it. The databases are already there. Let's start using 'em to prevent guns in the hands of the mentally ill.

FEYERICK: And, Jeff Gardere, this is a kid -- not a kid. He's 22 years old, he's a man -- whining, complaining, personality disorder or not. How do you treat someone like this?

GARDERE: It is very difficult. It does take a full system to do that. I just have to tell you when they did that welfare check on this young man if they had the information from the first two contacts, that third check, that third contact would have had much more significance. So what we're saying is we have to change the whole system.

FEYERICK: All right. Well, Jeff Gardere, Lou Palumbo, Holly Hughes, thank you so much.

Our condolences to the entire community there in Isla Vista, to all the students. We wish them all the best.

We're going to have the latest developments on the shooting investigation. That's going to be starting at 6:00 Eastern tomorrow morning. Do not miss "NEW DAY" with Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul.

We want to thank all our viewers in the United States and around the world. Get updates CNN.com. Thank you so much for joining us on what is a tragic evening.

I'm Deborah Feyerick. Now, CNN Films: "BLACKFISH."