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Five Dead, 21 Injured in Texas Mass Shooting; Hurricane Dorian Nears Bahamas, U.S. East Coast; Hong Kong Protesters Hold Airport Rally after Violent Night. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired September 01, 2019 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[01:00:00]
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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: -- sending another 21 to hospital. According to police, it all began with a traffic stop.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL GERKE, ODESSA POLICE CHIEF: The situation started about 3:17 this afternoon when a DPS trooper attempted to stop a gold Honda. When the DPS troopers got the car stopped, he was then shot by the occupant of the car. The vehicle continued westbound into the city of Odessa and shot an individual at I-20 and our West Loop -- excuse me -- our East Loop
Apparently, the subject then drove on our East Loop to 42nd Street, where there are multiple scenes and multiple victims. At some point, the subject stole a mail truck, ditched his car and there were other victims after that.
The victim (sic) then went eastbound, back on 42nd, toward Cinergy, which is a local movie theater, and, at that point, was contacted by law enforcement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Police eventually gunned down the shooter in the parking lot of that cinema. Witnesses Joey and Julie Vicknair recorded all of it on their cell phones.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JULIE VICKNAIR, WITNESS: Oh, my God, he's fixing to shoot.
(INAUDIBLE)
JOEY VICKNAIR, WITNESS: Y'all get down.
JULIE VICKNAIR: Oh, my God.
Cody, are you down?
JOEY VICKNAIR: Are you shooting at that man and lady right there? JULIE VICKNAIR: I don't know. I don't know. I can't see.
Oh, my God. I think they got him.
That was a -- that looks like a --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Police believe they have identified the shooter but the only public description they've given is a white male in his 30s. There is also no word yet on a motive.
Nerves were already raw in Texas, where four weeks ago, less than 300 miles away, a gunman opened fire at an El Paso Walmart, killing 22 people.
Joining us now from Dallas, Texas, is former Dallas police officer and author of "Mass Shootings: Six Steps to Survival," John Matthews.
Thank you for meeting with us.
JOHN MATTHEWS, FORMER DALLAS POLICE OFFICER AND AUTHOR: Glad to be here.
VAUSE: It seems Americans are finding new places and new inventive ways to kill each other with firearms.
Were you surprised when you heard these details, how it played out?
It is not a typical mass shooting, certainly not what we've become accustomed to.
MATTHEWS: No, it's not a typical mass shooting at all, where a suspect goes in, looking for a victim pool, wanting to get a high body count. This is not your shooting where it started in a school or a movie theater, a confined area where the suspect is really there to kill people.
I think as the facts come out over the next couple hours and the next couple of days, we'll learn a lot about this shooter.
Was this an individual that was simply running from the law?
Is this somebody that had a felony warrant and didn't want to go back to jail?
In my 30 years of policing, I've stopped many people who said, I'm not going to be taken alive, I'm not going to get back to jail and they were willing to use deadly force to get out of that situation.
These two DPS officers were caught off guard. The individual used a rifle to fire through his back windshield. This is a totally different situation.
But why did he keep shooting?
Why did he continue down the highway, shooting innocent people?
Did he think, hey, now that I shot at the cops, I'm just going to die, I might as well take as many people with me?
So this is a very atypical mass shooting.
VAUSE: Is there a bigger picture here that we're missing at the moment?
We focus on the motive. Was it the traffic stop which prompted the shooting spree or was it death by cop?
We seem to overlook -- by some counts there have been 280 mass shootings or more in this country this year alone. And right now, it seems nothing is being done about it.
MATTHEWS: Well, we've got a political stalemate in Washington. Everybody wants to be on one side or the other of the gun debate. We need to look at who these individuals are, why they're committing these acts, especially the premeditated acts.
This one may not have been premeditated. We don't know where that guy was going, why he had the gun, what type of gun he had or how many rounds he had.
Was it just a coincidence that he was stopped by the police?
He had a rifle in his car?
Was he going to commit a crime?
There are so many unanswered questions about this. So we have to get to the heart of the matter in this country and we have to start being proactive and identifying individuals and making sure (INAUDIBLE) before one of these situations happens.
Too many times I'm on live TV to be talking about another mass shooting and so often, two, three days later, we find out it could have been avoided. We had information. We had knowledge --
[01:05:00]
MATTHEWS: -- and we didn't act upon it. So I think we need to ask ourselves the hard questions.
How do we prevent these attacks?
VAUSE: A Texas state lawmaker posted this statement online. And it may reveal why there is this stalemate when it comes to trying to do something about everything. He posted this.
"Do something" is the statement we keep hearing. As an elected official, with a vote in Austin, let me tell you what I am not going to do. I am not going on use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God given rights of my fellow Texans. Period. "None of these so-called gun control solutions will work to stop a
person with evil intent. I say no to red flag pre-crime laws. No to universal background checks. No to bans on AR-15s or high capacity magazines. No to mandatory gun buybacks.
What can we do?
"YES to praying for victims. YES to praying for protection. YES to praying that God would transform the hearts of people with evil intent. YES to fathers not leaving their wives and children. YES to discipline in the homes.
" YES to supporting our public schools. YES to giving every law- abiding single mom the right to carry a handgun to protect her and her kids without permission from the state, and the same for all other law-abiding Texans of age.
" YES to your God-given, constitutionally protected rights. YES to God, and NO to more government intrusions."
Where do you start with someone like that who refuses to acknowledge the fact-based evidence about the effectiveness of gun laws and would rather rely on faith in God?
MATTHEWS: I tell you, there is an old Russian proverb that says pray to God but keep rowing to shore. You can pray all you want but you still have to be proactive. You have to take steps to stop these offenders. You have to have a system out there to identify some of these people.
The FBI recently reported a tremendous increase in people calling in with information, calling it with tips. That's a great start. But it's the tip of the iceberg. We have to work our social media companies.
There are so many solutions beyond this gun control debate that seems to be at a stalemate in these state capitals and in Washington. Let's start taking some of those proactive solutions, putting them in place and getting these offenders before they get to the point where they say, hey, you know what?
I'm going to go create havoc. I'm going to kill a lot of people and I'm going to make the 10 o'clock news. There are a lot of proactive steps that need to be taken. This legislator wants to pray, let him pray. But let him get in there and vote and be proactive and put some of these things that place that we can stop these guys so we're not constantly talking about dead bodies on television.
VAUSE: I think a lot of people around the world find it really hard to understand, how there is such a reluctance by so many, especially within the conservative side, the Democrats as well, in some of those red states, that they are just not willing to act despite the fact that there is continual acts of violence, mass violence, mass shootings, day after day after day, week after week after week.
And yet there are some very obvious, easy solutions out there that never, ever happen.
How do you explain that to the rest of the world?
MATTHEWS: Well, it is very difficult to explain. Because some of the facts are taken out of context. I just heard one of the analysts saying about the number of mass shootings in this country -- and we looked at the mass shootings just a few years ago and the states with strict gun controls have about the same mass shootings as states without strict gun controls.
So everybody wants to focus on the gun control debate instead of saying, OK, we can't make any headway at all on that.
What can we make headway on?
Can we agree on some of these red flag legislation?
Can we agree on stricter mental health legislation that will allow us to go seize weapons?
Can we agree on bringing up law enforcement so they can go in there and determine if somebody is a threat and make sure they don't have access to weapons?
There's a lot of things that can be being done. For me, being a career law enforcement officer, it is very frustrating that our legislators, our representatives are not taking proactive action and stopping these attacks.
VAUSE: It's a good point to finish on, thank you very much. We'll leave it there. And it is up to the lawmakers to act not just in a responsive way but in a preventive way as well. And that's what we're not seeing. Good to talk to you, thank you.
MATTHEWS: Thank you, sir.
VAUSE: Again, the suspect who was killed in the Cinergy Movie Theater in Odessa. The local station KOSA was there when it all happened. Their studios are in the same mall where that theater is and so when people started run, their anchors had to leave the set. They continued to report offscreen before making it back on air.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAY HENDRICKS, KOSA ANCHOR: We just kept our microphones on so we could get you up to date because, once again, this is not something we thought would ever happen here.
There are more officers with guns in here. I just --
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HENDRICKS: -- saw them. This is still active. I just saw three deputies coming by with guns drawn. So we don't know if perhaps someone is in here. Again, this is very active here in the mall. So I'm going to keep here -- let's see. I'm being told there's more information on the Midland Facebook. So
let me go back to the Midland Police Department Facebook. Bear with me because we're trying to get all the details that we can.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).
HENDRICKS: Uh-oh. OK. So we've got to disappear. Hang on. We're going to keep our mikes on so we can get you up to date. We're told to get out of here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: OK, from Texas to Washington, U.S. politicians are speaking out about this shooting in Texas. When we come back, we'll tell you how the White House is responding to the latest tragedy.
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VAUSE: We continue with breaking news here in the United States. At least five people are dead, 21 injured after a mass shooting in West Texas. The gunman went on a drive-by rampage, opening fire from his car after a traffic stop near Midland and Odessa. That's only about 250 miles or 400 kilometers from the scene of the El Paso mass shooting four weeks ago.
The attacker eventually abandoned his vehicle and stole a mail truck. After a gun battle with police, he was cornered and shot dead.
Midland mayor Jerry Morales spoke to CNN's Ana Cabrera. He described how this latest shooting came to an end.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR JERRY MORALES, MIDLAND, TEXAS: The shooter was pulled over on the interstate by a DPS officer. That's when he shot the officer and then took off and started shooting randomly. And then everything happened after that.
ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: And where was it that the shooter ultimately died?
MORALES: At a theater, a movie theater called Cinergy, in between Midland and Odessa.
CABRERA: And what was the circumstance in which the police encountered that person there?
MORALES: So again, it just pursued into a chase. And between all the law enforcement, they trapped him in the parking lot of the Cinergy theater and then that's when they were able to engage the shooter.
(END VIDEO CLIP) VAUSE: As authorities continue to investigate this latest deadly mass shooting, the White House --
[01:15:00]
VAUSE: -- says it's monitoring the developments. Boris Sanchez has reaction from the U.S. president.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is the third time this month that President Trump has had to be briefed on a mass shooting in the United States, the second one that span of time in the state of Texas. The president closely monitoring developments from Camp David, where he's spending the weekend and where he tweeted this.
"Just briefed by attorney general Barr about the shootings in Texas. FBI and law enforcement fully engaged. More to follow."
We also heard from vice president Mike Pence, the vice president headed to Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of World War II. The vice president saying the White House would work with Democrats to try to find some solution to the problem of these mass shootings. Listen to more of what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our hearts break for the families who have loved ones who have been injured, those who have loved ones who have lost their lives in the wake of this latest mass shooting.
And the president and I and this administration remain absolutely determined to work with leaders of both parties in the Congress to take steps that we can address and confront this scourge of mass atrocity in our country. Thank you all very much. We'll see you on the plane.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Sources indicate that officials at the White House have been working on some sort of plan to try to address these mass shootings and they have been since the back-to-back shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, but the specifics of what that plan entails still unclear.
The president routinely, after these shootings happen, speaks very ambitiously about passing some sort of gun control legislation, even talking about comprehensive background checks at times. Frequently that changes as days pass and he speaks directly to the leadership of the National Rifle Association.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Presidential candidates are also weighing in. Joe Biden tweeted this. "I'm heartbroken, sickened and angry, weeks after the horror in El
Paso, another community in Texas has been terrorized by gun violence. Enough. We must end this epidemic."
And former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke was blunt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETO O'ROURKE (D-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Don't know what the motivation is. Do not yet know the firearms that were used or how they acquired them. But we do know this is (inaudible) up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes!
(APPLAUSE)
O'ROURKE: We do know that this has to stop (INAUDIBLE). There is no -- there is no reason, there is no reason that we have to accept this as our fortune, as our future, as our fate. And yet, functionally, right now, we have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: And from Senator Cory Booker, "Beginning on day one in office, I will take executive action to reduce gun violence, closing dangerous loopholes in gun sales, cracking down on gun manufacturers and investing in communities impacted by gun violence."
CNN's Alex Marquardt spoke about the impact the shooting is having on the community with Texas state senator Kelton Gray Seliger, whose district includes Odessa and Midland.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELTON SELIGER (R), TEXAS STATE SENATOR: Everyone in the state of Texas and certainly the committee of Odessa is reacting with a great sense of loss, not only to the loss of those lives, the injuries suffered but to the loss of our sense of peacefulness and safety that we share with so many communities around the state of Texas.
ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Do you have any information about the shooter?
This law enforcement official telling us they may have positively identified the man whom we now, all we know now is that it was a white man in his 30s.
Do you know anything more?
SELIGER: I know nothing more. Law enforcement probably won't say anything else until they know exactly who the person is and some other details like that. We expect that in the morning.
MARQUARDT: What more have you been told or did you observe about the reaction to this shooter and what the response was in the wake of that traffic stop, when the gunman first opened fire? What was the reaction like?
SELIGER: Because it was a very fluid situation on the ground, I don't know exactly what people were thinking at that moment. But this is the first situation like that where the shooter was on the move and was shooting at other people randomly and things like that.
This is a different sort of situation which creates another set of questions.
How do we react in the case of an active shooter?
There are far more questions than answers at this point.
MARQUARDT: Lots of questions and not an enormous amount of answers.
Do you know what investigators are doing to answer those questions?
Have they been keeping you abreast of their investigation?
SELIGER: We have received some information that has been widely disseminated by the Department of Public Safety. And then I have an office in Midland and they're keeping us advised to the extent they know exactly what they're telling us. We'll know a lot more because --
[01:20:00]
SELIGER: -- the governor and I and Representative Landgraf, we'll all be in Odessa. Then we'll know a lot more of the facts then as they investigate just who the shooter is and where the impulse to engage in this activity might have come from.
Was there anyone else involved or knew about the situation?
It's very, very important.
Was it planned in advance?
Those are some of the questions the Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers are working on now.
MARQUARDT: Senator, where were you when you heard the news and what was your reaction?
SELIGER: I was, like so many people today, sitting in my living room with my wife, watching college football. And I got a call from my office that said what was going on. And my reaction was like it would be for most people, absolute horror and an immediate sense of loss.
MARQUARDT: So what message do you have tonight, as your fellow community members, your neighbors, friends, family grapple with this and try to come to terms with -- we often say, we often call this a senseless tragedy. But it was absolutely senseless and right now we have no idea why this was carried out, not that it even matters because no explanation will ever justify a horrific act like this. But what message do you have for your constituents?
SELIGER: You have a good point.
How do you make sense of something that is senseless?
And yet we have to. It's why the governor impaneled our commission on public safety to talk about this kind of behavior, see if we can get to the root causes and what we do. What I would tell the people in communities everywhere is we still live in a great and peaceful area of the state of Texas and the United States.
Don't panic but let's start thinking about what we need to do in the case of an active shooter. I've already started that kind of discussion with my family. And I think that everyone ought to have that sort of situation because this is not the last instance we're going to see, very sadly.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Now our other breaking news this hour, Hurricane Dorian will begin whipping up winds and surf in the northern Bahamas. More than 70,000 people are in the direct path of this category 4 storm.
Earlier they were urged to head to shelters while they still could. Dorian is forecast to stall over the Bahamas for 24 hours. Residents fear the impact from that storm surge and the rain could be devastating.
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VAUSE: The best guesstimate has Dorian making a northern turn and avoiding a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic Coast. There is still a strong threat of coastal flooding from the rain and the storm surge. More from CNN's Randi Kaye reporting in from West Palm Beach.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in West Palm Beach many folks are certainly breathing a sigh of relief. They're not out of the woods yet with tropical storm force winds headed to this area. But certainly folks are out and about. Here at Two Drunken Goats, a very popular bar and restaurant in West Palm Beach, folks are back to having a good time.
General manager Ryan Brady is here.
And you're seeing an uptick in your customers returning?
RYAN BRADY, TWO DRUNKEN GOATS: Yes. I think people are starting to relax a little bit, being a little more optimistic. We're still cautious, still being -- you don't want to drop your guard just yet but I think people are being a little more optimistic.
KAYE: And for you, you were planning to shut down and you would have brought these screens up and brought all the furniture in?
BRADY: Oh, yes, we would have put all the screens up. We'd take down the lights that we got over here, we'd bring all the furniture inside, lock everything up.
KAYE: And you've been through hurricanes before.
BRADY: Oh, yes, I've lived here since I was 14 years old. So I've seen -- Andrew was the first one I went through.
KAYE: So this is just the Florida way. You panic, you worry and then hopefully it goes out to sea or somewhere else.
BRADY: Right, yes, I mean, nobody wants it. But we're ready for it.
KAYE: So you're cautiously optimistic that you won't get hit?
BRADY: Exactly, yes.
KAYE: OK, you and the rest of us. Certainly this area of South Florida, this area of West Palm Beach, as I said, breathing a sigh of relief but also keeping their eyes wide open for Dorian if it comes this way -- reporting from West Palm Beach, Randi Kaye, CNN. Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Randi, thank you.
We'll take a short break. More on Texas experiencing a second mass shooting in less than a month. We'll have a lot more details on how this latest tragedy unfolded.
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VAUSE: Police in Odessa, Texas, say they have identified the mass shooter but they're not releasing his name, saying only he's a white male in his mid-30s. According to police, the incident all started in a traffic stop. State troopers pulled him over and then he sped away.
At one point, the gunman abandoned his car and stole a postal vehicle. He was eventually caught in the parking lot of the movie theater but not before killing five people and wounding 21 others.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GERKE: This subject was contacted by law enforcement and a change of gunfire happened. And that subject is deceased.
(END VIDEO CLIP) VAUSE: Witness Alex Woods recorded the end of the rampage on his cell phone camera.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEX WOODS, WITNESS: There's a shooting going on in Odessa, Texas. They're shooting right there.
Oh, he hit the barrier. The cop just hit the barrier.
Get down, get down, get down.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get down, get down, get down.
WOODS: Stand still. He shoot him, he shoot him.
Oh, he's killed him. He killed him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) the shooting?
(INAUDIBLE)?
WOODS: Oh, he's shooting him up. He hit the barrier.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: CNN's Polo Sandoval was following this story from the moment it broke and he filed this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Authorities are telling me that it all started as a traffic violation. Authorities with the Texas Department of Public Safety saying two of their state troopers were attempting a traffic stop on Interstate 20 when the lone occupant of that vehicle, before the car even came to a stop, grabbed a rifle and then aimed out his rear window and then opened fire, wounding one of those two state troopers.
Well, that gunman, authorities say, then fled and then began shooting randomly at other innocent bystanders, wounding several people and that includes three additional officers, one with the Odessa Police Department and another one with the Midland Police Department.
He was eventually cornered outside a nearby movie theater and entertainment center, which is where he was shot and killed by police. As for the injured, we can only tell you what the Medical Center Health System there locally has confirmed and that is that they treated 13 people. One of them died from their injuries. And at least 10 others remain hospitalized right now.
That includes a pediatric patient, we're told, one of the younger survivors of the shooting who had to be airlifted and is being treated at an area hospital -- rather in Dallas, Texas. And we do understand that two people have been treated and released. As for the three officers that were injured, we're told that the state
trooper is in serious but stable condition. As for the other two officers, they are expected to recover from their injuries.
Investigators now still trying to determine more about the gunman. They have not officially identified this individual, only saying that he is a white male in his 30s. Authorities still trying to investigate a possible motive and why he opened fire on those state troopers.
But it is important to point out that this shooting happened exactly four weeks after the deadly shooting in El Paso, Texas -- Polo Sandoval, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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VAUSE: Well, for more now on the police investigation into how and a motive for all this we're joined from Middleton, New Jersey, by CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Wackrow.
Thank you for being with us. I want to read you our latest reporting on the moments before the gunman opened fire. The shooting appears to have begun about 3:13 pm Central time, 4:13 pm Eastern, when two Texas Department of Public Safety troopers attempted to conduct a traffic stop on a vehicle on Interstate 20 --
[01:35:00]
VAUSE: -- westbound.
This is coming from Elizabeth Carter, one of the spokespersons there.
Before the vehicle came to a complete stop the driver and only occupant pointed a rifle toward his rear window, fired several shots toward the DPS patrol unit, wounding one of the troopers.
Without reading way too much into too little information, the fact he opened fire before the vehicle had even stopped, it does beg the question, why did he react that way?
What was he thinking?
Was he ready for a confrontation?
Was it a spur of the moment decision?
What's your thinking on this?
JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, listen, I take a look at this situation and there's a couple of things we don't know. We don't know what caused the DPS officers to initiate that traffic stop.
Was it that there was a warning or a watch out for this individual? And that they were looking for him?
Or was it in the routine course of enforcing a traffic violation?
What occurred or what the genesis was of that traffic stop, we don't know. What we do know is when the officers did approach the vehicle, it was not in park, it was slightly rolling forward, as it's been reported.
And the shooter actually took the rifle and was shooting out the rear of the window. I mean, this to me seems like it was premeditated in most instances. Just think about how difficult it is to -- it would be to move a long-barreled weapon throughout a vehicle.
I mean, just the confines of that space and then to fire. So these officers were put into a position of disadvantage right from the very beginning.
VAUSE: You know, sometimes is it easy to work out a motive for a mass shooting. Four weeks ago, a gunman in El Paso, he had a manifesto, he was taken alive, he talked to police. Still we don't know why a shooter opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas in 2017, killing 58 people. He didn't leave behind a note, took his own life.
Between those two examples being the extremes, where do you put this investigation?
WACKROW: Listen, this is really difficult to find an immediate motive, to answer that question why. The suspect's dead. So we can't interview him.
What can we do?
We can go through the investigative process to understand and try to ascertain that answer.
The way law enforcement is going to do that is they're going to start researching who this individual was.
Did he have any connection to a particular ideology, did he have a tendency toward violent action?
They're going to look back in his history to understand, did he have violent tendencies in the past, interaction with law enforcement?
Does he have a criminal history?
All of those things are going to start putting this together to actually answer the question why.
Why did this occur?
Why were these officers shot at?
Why are there five dead, all these people wounded on a Memorial Day weekend? VAUSE: We're learning he was armed with a rifle, no specifics on what sort of rifle but a rifle nonetheless. The mayor of Midland, Texas, was quoted as saying, he was driving around randomly shooting at people while he was driving. One or two or more of his victims were shot while both shooter and victim were in moving vehicles.
Just think about that. Without sounding glib, that's not the easiest thing to do, is it?
WACKROW: No. For law enforcement, this is a real change in tactics by attackers in these mass shooting incidents. Normally, what we see is a mass shooter at a specific location, where law enforcement can then respond into, cordon off, set a perimeter and address the threat.
Here the threat was mobile. It was at various locations throughout the city. And then the attacker actually changed vehicles. Again, law enforcement was in a state of chaos at the very beginning because they were trying to ascertain facts as to the location of the shooting and what was going on.
And they had this really rapidly developing situation that was dynamic, with a shooter that was very unpredictable.
VAUSE: And to that point, I keep going back and forth with whether or not this was random or whether this was all planned out. The changing of the vehicle at one point, being able to actually fire at other vehicles while he was in a moving vehicle at those other vehicles and actually hitting a target.
That suggests one of two things. He got very lucky and if you shoot enough rounds you're going to hit something. Or he had some kind of training here.
WACKROW: Listen, again, we don't know what we don't know in this instance. And it's hard to speculate on a lot of these things. There's a lot of indicators that would say, based upon my experience as a criminal investigator, that, just from the initial interaction with the DPS, that initial traffic stop, not coming to a full and complete stop, launching that attack against law enforcement, that is an ambush-style attack.
With the amount of rounds that he had on him, his ability --
[01:40:00]
WACKROW: -- to fire and maneuver in a moving vehicle, it does show this individual may have had some sort of experience.
VAUSE: Jonathan, thanks so much.
WACKROW: Thanks so much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Hong Kong is reeling after a night of fire and tear gas. Angry demonstrators battling the police in the streets. And there are more protests to come. We'll explain in just a moment.
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VAUSE: Protesters in Hong Kong are planning a rally at the international airport after a night of violence, described by some of the worst violence during the three-months long unrest.
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VAUSE (voice-over): Police and demonstrators clashed in a number of train stations Saturday with police using batons and tear gas to disperse the crowds; 40 people were arrested in one station alone before the authorities called criminal damages and illegal assembly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CNN's Will Ripley has the very latest on the chaotic scenes of burning barricades and tear gas.
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WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Just as Hong Kong police dispersed one demonstration, down the road that way, we walked this way and found this. I thought we were walking --
[01:45:00]
RIPLEY: -- up to some sort of a rock concert or Burning Man. There were laser beams.
You hear cheers from the crowd of possibly thousands of protesters behind this barricade of fire that they have set up in the heart of Hong Kong, one of Hong Kong's busiest streets here in Wan Chai, shut down by protesters, who burned an umbrella.
They set up barricades. And obviously there was enough propellant there because this fire's been going on for quite some time. We have seen protesters use their usual tactics today, although this is one of the more dramatic things that we've seen.
They've thrown bricks at police. They have hurled petrol bombs at officers. And officers have fired back.
OK. Not sure what that was but we'll just get a little bit further back from the fire there. Police officers have used tear gas, something that's been a mainstay this summer, and they have also been using water cannons, shooting out water with blue dye to try to identify the protesters who might get sprayed with the water because, keep in mind, all of these gatherings here are illegal.
Hong Kong police did not give a permit. Demonstrators came out anyway. Smaller numbers, not the families that we saw out at the park. These are the people who are out here ready to fight. And that's exactly what they're doing here on the streets of Hong Kong. I'm Will Ripley for CNN.
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VAUSE: With that we'll take you to a break. You're watching CNN.
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VAUSE: Well, the Bahamas are bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Dorian and the storm is very powerful and close to a category 5. Forecasters say it is expected to stall for up to 24 hours and bringing heavy rain and a storm surge of 5 meters or 15 feet.
And no clear idea where or if it will make landfall in the United States but it could be a prolonged and damaging event even if Dorian stays over the Atlantic.
More now on breaking news in Texas, at least five people are dead and 21 injured after another mass shooting. The gunman went on a drive-by rampage, opening fire from his car after a traffic stop near Midland and Odessa.
And that is 250 miles or 400 kilometers from the scene of the El Paso mass shooting last month. Police cornered the attacker and shot him dead at a movie cinema and he has been identified as a white male in his 30s but no name has been released. Ana Cabrera spoke to U.S. presidential candidate Julian Castro about the attack.
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JULIAN CASTRO (D-TX), FORMER HUD SECRETARY, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our hearts go out to the victims of the shooting tonight and their families. All of us have heavy hearts. We're thinking about them.
It is also another very powerful reminder that we have to act. We have to act to stop these kinds of incidents. The most powerful moment of the last three weeks, after what happened in El Paso and in Dayton, to me, came one or two days after Dayton.
The governor of Ohio was giving remarks about what had happened. And the crowd that was listening to him, people from every walk of life, people, I'm sure, of different political backgrounds, began to chant, "Do something. Do something. Do something."
(INAUDIBLE) do something to ensure that people who shouldn't have weapons don't get them and that certain types of weapons never get on the street. And we don't know all the details of what happened today. But we
certainly know what happened in El Paso and Dayton and at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, where I was yesterday. And we know that we have to do something.
CABRERA: Let me read you a part of the statement from Governor Greg Abbott, who writes, "The first lady and I are heartbroken over the senseless and cowardly attack and we offer our unwavering support to the victims, their families and all the people of Midland and Odessa,"
And he goes on to say, "We will remind all Texans that we will not allow the Lone Star State to be overrun by hatred and violence."
When you talk about do something, when you talk about taking action, what is it you're proposing specifically?
CASTRO: What we need to do is twofold.
Number one, although we don't know the details of this incident, what we do know is that extremism -- and particularly white supremacy has been on the rise -- and that's turned into violence in places like El Paso and Charleston and other places.
So we need to give our Department of Justice, of Homeland Security and our FBI the tools that they need to root out that extremism before it turns into violence.
Secondly, we need common sense gun safety legislation, universal background checks, limiting the capacity of magazines, a renewed assault weapons ban.
As your viewers know, the AR-15 especially has been, unfortunately, the weapon of choice of many of these shooters. Those are weapons of war and don't belong on the streets.
In addition to that, we need to do things like institute a seven-day waiting period for the purchase a firearm and I would actually raise the excise tax on guns and on ammunition from 10 percent to 20 percent and then use the $600 million to $700 million that that would garner in revenue every year to invest in gun violence prevention programs in local communities.
We know what we have to do. The issue is who's going to have the political courage, the political will to do it. And I think Republicans and Democrats need to work together on this.
That's true. It's also true, as much as I'd like to believe Governor Abbott's words, this is a governor that championed and signed legislation that takes effect tomorrow, eight new pieces of legislation that are going to make it easier for people to carry weapons in Texas.
So this time of reckoning has come and I really believe it's a new era in the United States, where people of different backgrounds are saying, do something, do something, do something and I hope that we will and I'm going to work like others will. CABRERA: So as you argue on gun control -- and I'll quote directly --
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CABRERA: -- from you -- that "it's possible to have common sense gun reform and still have the Second Amendment in place," what do you say to your fellow Texans, who believe a moment like this is exactly why lawful gun owners should be allowed to keep them ready and in more public places?
CASTRO: The answer is not more guns. Think about what happened in El Paso three weeks ago, for instance. You had a shooter that drove 10 hours to El Paso, knowing that he was going to go into a Walmart that had 2,000 to 3,000 people there in the state of Texas, that has concealed carry, that has open carry. It allows campus carry.
It has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the United States and people who are carrying with them. He knew that he was going into a situation where many, many people were armed and ready. And that didn't stop him. It didn't make a single difference.
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VAUSE: And with that, we are going to leave it this hour and we'll come back at the top of the hour. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. Please stay with us. After a short break we'll have a lot more. We have two breaking news stories. You are watching CNN.
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