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Soon, Police Give Update on MSU Shooting That Killed Three Students; Soon, Court Releases Parts of Georgia Grand Jury Report on Trump's Actions; Officials Update Investigation into Michigan State University Shooting. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired February 16, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour this Thursday, I'm Jim Sciutto.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Erica Hill.

Any moment now, officials in Michigan will give an update on the investigation into the deadly mass shooting at Michigan State University. We're going to bring that to you when it happens, also share the new disturbing details about we're learning more about the note that the gunman left inside his backpack detailing other possible targets.

SCIUTTO: Plus, sometime this morning, a Georgia court will release parts of special grand jury report on former President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. We will much more on what we're expecting to learn from that release in just a moment.

We do begin this hour with the latest on that mass shooting, one of several in the last couple of weeks, at Michigan State University.

CNN Correspondent Adrienne Broaddus is in Lansing, Michigan. Adrienne, press conference is about to start. What do we expect to learn from investigators?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is expected to start any minute now. Just moments ago, Jim, I heard from a university spokesperson, Dan Olsen, and he said that we will learn today, this morning, updates on the students who were physically injured. At last check, we told you they were in critical condition, and at least four of them we know underwent surgery. So, we will learn more about their progress.

Olsen says we will also have what he calls, quote, high level updates from members of the law enforcement. And a lot of folks that we heard from at the vigil last night told us they want to know why, why did this happen, why did the shooter purchase the gun, why was he targeting MSU, if, as members of law enforcement officials have told us, that 43-year-old shooter had no ties to the university. So, again, we will hear high-level updates from members of the law enforcement. And also we will learn about the next steps at the university. I spoke with professors who have taught on this campus for years and those professor that I heard from say they are supposed to return to class on Monday, but members of their staff are concerned, they're still concerned about the students, and wondering how do they walk back into the classroom on Monday after what happened here today.

So, part of that update will be outlining what is next for Michigan State University as well as talking about the different counseling services that will be provided.

Meanwhile, we have been sharing with you and our viewers throughout the morning about this note, investigators say, they obtained from that 43-year-old shooter. Our very own John Miller spoke with a law enforcement official who is close to the investigation who says this note was two pages.

And the 43-year-old started the note with an introduction, saying his name was Anthony McRae. He also goes on to say, I will be shooting up MSU and he says another team will finish this city of Lansing. But that is not all. There are also targets in that note. So, it is unclear if the members of law enforcement that we will hear from at any moment will talk about these targets. We do know one target was a warehouse, the other, an employment agency, a discount store and a church.

As you can imagine, all of this is difficult for the folks who are still coping with what happened here Monday night. Alumni who returned to the campus for homecoming, some saying, myself included, never thought they would be back on campus to cover a mass shooting. Jim and Erica?

SCIUTTO: Morning in America. Adrienne Broaddus, thanks so much.

Well, any moment now in Georgia, the court is expected to release parts of a special grand jury's report on former President Trump's and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

[10:05:05]

CNN's Sara Murray, she is back with us now.

So, from speaking earlier last hour, it does sound like we're going to learn a fair amount from this report.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, we're waiting to see -- we will be getting their introduction, the grand jury's conclusion, as well as this section where the special grand jury had concerns that there were witnesses who were appearing before them who may have lied during their testimony. So, again, we're really looking for the tenor of the grand jury in all of this.

What we're not going to get, which I know everyone is very eager to see, is whether the special grand jury recommended that anyone should face criminal charges. The judge was pretty clear that he felt that it was premature to release this information. He did not want names being dropped in the early release of this report, because people have not officially been charged. So, they have some ability to defend themselves. He did not think it was fair to put that all out there.

Again, all of this stems back to an investigation that started in 2021 when former President Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and pressed Raffensperger to just find the votes needed for Trump to win the state of Georgia, which he, of course, lots. This is a panel that heard from 75 witnesses over the course of their special grand jury investigation, people like Rudy Giuliani, people like former Trump attorney -- or current Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn, people like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, as well as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. So, there's a lot they had to dig through.

We're only going to get a sliver of that today, and a lot of it we are still going to be waiting for as the district attorney there decides whether she is going to bring indictments against anyone.

HILL: All right. And we will bring more of that, too, obviously, as it's released, Sara. I appreciate it.

I do want to take everybody straight to Lansing, Michigan, now where we're hearing from the president of Michigan State. Let's listen in.

TERESA K. WOODRUFF, PRESIDENT, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY: Others today in this news conference are going to provide updates on the investigation and law enforcement matters. And so my comments are going to be brief, and they're going to focus on three areas, first, where are we now, what's next and the process that's going to guide our decisions as we move forward.

As you'll soon hear, the five students at Sparrow are still in critical condition, but I am pleased that we are seeing some signs of improvement in some of our students. And our Spartan nation continues to send good thoughts to each of them, to their families and to the doctors and nurses at Sparrow Hospital.

As I have said before, grief is a profoundly personal thing, and we know from the trauma experts and from talking to colleagues at other universities who have experienced similar tragedies, everyone grieves differently, and the recovery process isn't linear. And so each member of our campus will have different needs and our focus is on providing as much flexibility as possible in supporting the diverse needs of this campus community.

So, as we move forward, I ask the campus and everyone in our Spartan community and extended family, as represented here, to provide empathy and grace, and the knowledge that each person's support may be different and we will be considerate of that.

I am extremely grateful for the quick actions that we have had pulling together the many counseling and support services this week. We know that many in the community will continue to need services for months to come, and that some haven't reached out yet. But I am encouraged and can report of that hundreds of students have already utilized our counseling services that were provided at the Hannah Community Center or our residence halls.

We also have provided services to employees that is called reflect and connect. And we are looking for -- looking into training for supervisors as more faculty and staff begin returning to positions today and into next week. We are encouraging empathy and patience in an atmosphere for all to recover at their own pace and we will continue to offer these services into the future.

Today, MSU is resuming standard operations after 48 hours of being in modified operations. While we are returning to standard operations, classes remain suspended through Sunday. This standard operations means that the university offices are open, but in this case, with wide latitude provided to supervisors across our university network.

The two buildings, Berkey remains closed for remainder of the semester. The second building, the Union, is still being evaluated for decisions to be reported later. FBI special agent in charge of Michigan, Jim Tarasca, will report in just a moment on access to those buildings for students, faculty and staff who still have materials that are present in those spaces.

Leaders across campus have been meeting with a variety of the groups that have been impacted from our families of those that we have lost as well as those who are bravely recovering at Sparrow.

[10:10:09]

We have also been talking to the students, faculty and staff who are in the class of the shooter in Berkey Hall and the employees who are in the union Monday night. We are listening and we are supporting at all levels.

Our core leadership team is meeting daily and we will continue to do so to prioritize the needs of campus. We want to be supportive not only of our campus, but we understand that the community is involved, and we want to give people the confidence to reengage and stay engaged as we come together.

Our alumni network, over 500,000 Spartans strong are contacting us and wanting to get involved. They are generously donating their time and items that can be helpful to the community, including 15,000 candles last night as well as flowers that were associated with our vigil.

For those who want to give in a way that can support MSU at this time, we have set up a fund called Spartan Strong Fund, and you can find that on the MSU website. And Chief Lynch has also told me of the many people who have dropped off food and other items to our MSU P.D., and we are all very grateful for that outpouring of love and support. And as I understand it, we are out of kitchen space at this point. So, we thank you for that outpouring in so many ways.

We know as a campus that we have hard work ahead of us. Moving forward won't be easy. Unfortunately, others in higher education have been through this, and we are connecting in many ways that through the shared experiences, we will have ideas about how we can evaluate our best plans forward. And as we move forward from today, we will work together to make informed decisions and lean on each other. None of us have all of the answers but we do have each other.

So, at this point, I'd like to turn this briefing over to our chief of police and adjunct professor in our school of criminal justice, Marlon Lynch. Marlon?

MARLON C. LYNCH, V.P. FOR PUBLIC SAFETY AND CHIEF OF POLICE, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY: Thank you, President Woodruff. Good morning.

I'd like to start with some thanks to outreach by our colleagues, our local partners but also some well-established associations, the Michigan Association Chiefs of Police, the International Chiefs of Police, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators and the Commission Agency on Law Enforcement Accreditation. We have all received your support, prayers, and thanks and very valued. So, thank you for that.

In addition to that, I decided to focus on some positive things, some positive things that have been shared with me over the past couple of days with that. In helping us in our response to this critical incident, we had approximately 19 law enforcement agencies and six fire departments, numerous emergency medical services as well respond to that. We had off-duty police officers not only from our police department but from local and partnering agencies that responded that came without a request to help in that particular situation. Not a surprise though. What occurred on Monday night as far as our response is a collaborative effort and is the product of constant and continuous training together, relationships and preparation for that.

We also, unfortunately, had an opportunity to respond last week to Oakridge (ph) High School. With a very similar result, the differences that was not confirmed and it was ruled to be false. So, just imagine the stress put on the first responders responding to a situation at Oakridge (ph) High School that we take seriously until otherwise notify, and in just a few days later responding to this incident here.

We have to recover, too. We have to heal. That process has begun as well. We have made services available for our staff, our police and public safety staff beginning today. We have also short-term plans as well as long-term plans as we move forward with this. And we are definitely consulting those that have been through the process before for that particular reason.

[10:15:00]

We learned a few amazing things, and, again, not surprising, just knowing what has occurred and who is involved. Our students that were in Berkey Hall, in addition to being placed in situations that they probably have never been encountered with before, when their students and friends and classmates needed assistance, they rendered aid. They took the time to render aid with that.

The officers that responded within the buildings within minutes, one of the first things they encountered were the victims and those victims happened to be our students, and they stopped to render aid and immediately got emergency medical services on scene to remove them so that they could get the treatment and the care that they needed. Those are significant because it gave them a chance, those that had been wounded, and are still fighting, but based on, based on those being present at the time stopping to actually render aid to them.

The dispatchers, dispatch function is a very key component to what we do with our response. And if any of you have heard any of the radio traffic that happened that night, it is amazing. They were calm, they prioritize, they communicated well, they did their job, they did their job extremely well, extremely well.

My point in this is to say it is not based on an individual. We all have roles. When it comes time to actually do what you have been trained to do, that happened. And there is a caring component as well, some very selfless, and in stopping to assist when they could have easily just run out of the building themselves. And there was nothing wrong with that at all. That is part of how they are actually trained.

Our students, they received -- they have the opportunity to receive that training and run, hide, fight. And, unfortunately, some of them during their high school years, middle school years, think about the generation here now, they have had to go through that. They have had to go through that.

So, I found it positive to be able to communicate that with that. Those are some stories that need to be discussed as well. And, hopefully, that is actually what takes place, but some has already done that, but I think we needed to take a moment to actually state that, the appreciation for that.

So, what we will hear now will be updates in addition to the Michigan State University Police and Public Safety representative that is here. We also have Lansing Police Department, Michigan State Police as well as the FBI come with updates and, again, we appreciate your presence here with that.

Deputy Chief Rozman?

CHRIS ROZMAN, INTERIM DEPUTY CHIEF, MSU DEPARTMENT OF POLICE AND PUBLIC SAFETY: Good morning, everybody, thank you, chief. I want to begin by, again, honoring the victims, our students. As a father, I cannot imagine what all the families continue to go through. The past few days have been so unbelievably difficult for our officers and our community, and we continue to mourn with our community and start the healing process.

The vigil last night was unbelievable, the turnout. We want to thank our Michigan State Police partners for providing security at that event so our MSU police officers could attend and be with our community and mourn together. And that event truly was unbelievable, how many people came from all over the country for that event.

I'm going to start with some brief updates and then I'm going to hand it off to some of our law enforcement partners that are here today to offer additional details.

We have received questions about the ages of the deceased students, and those are as follows. Arielle Anderson was 19 years old. Brian Fraser was 20 years old.

[10:20:00]

And Alexandria Verner was also 20 years old. We were present yesterday when they were recognized in the chamber of the Michigan House of Representatives, and that was a very moving experience as well.

As the president mentioned, the five students in the hospital remain in critical condition. Out of respect for the families, we will not be releasing the names of the victims in the hospital. We do understand that some of those names have been made public by family and friends, but we feel strongly about not confirming their names out of respect for the families, and we hope you understand.

So, even though MSU Police and Public Safety is the lead agency in charge of this investigation, the investigation is very complex. It's bifurcated. It involves many different agencies. Different parts of that investigation are being handled by different agencies in a very unified and coordinated effort. That unified cooperation between all of the agencies involved and the resources that have been deployed to campus from all over the country is impressive.

I'll share a few brief updates regarding the investigation and some of our partners here today will elaborate on some of these details as well.

We can confirm that the shooter had two handguns on his person when he was located. Those handguns are both 9 millimeter. He also had additional magazines and ammunition on his person.

Our investigative team did work with our federal ATF partners to trace those weapons and -- by the shooter -- by the shooter but they were not registered.

We can also confirm that a note was found on the shooter and the location that the shooter was located was roughly 3.8 miles northwest of campus.

As I said the Michigan State Police is here today and they will share additional information about that shooting scene.

We want to thank all of our local, county, state and federal partners for all of their assistance that they provided throughout this investigation. The investigative assistance that we have received after the initial incident has been absolutely overwhelming as well.

As the interim president said, we would also like to thank the media for being active partners throughout this investigation, your ability to share our information while understanding the sensitive nature and having compassion for the families is very much appreciated.

At this time, I am going to turn it over to Lieutenant Rene Gonzalez from the Michigan State Police. We will be available for questions at the end. Rene?

LT. RENE GONZALEZ, MICHIGAN STATE POLICE: Thank you, Deputy Chief Rozman.

The information I'm going to give out is dealing with the contact that LPD had -- LPD, MLPD, MSU -- I'm LPD, MSP and our state security officers had contact with the shooter at Lake Lansing, at Large Road. Our detectives responded to Lake Lansing Road and Large Street where subject matching the MSU's shooting suspect, Anthony McRae, was observed walking. What had happened is the LPD officers received a call that a subject matching that description was walking down the street, and this was on Lake Lansing Road near Large Street, city of Lansing.

Officers made contact, two LPD officers made contact with the shooter approximately 20 feet from McRae. They exited the vehicle, ordered him to show his hand, however, he produced a weapon and then killed himself.

[10:25:03]

It does appear that from the body-worn camera that McRae did not verbalize anything to the officers prior to him shooting himself or taking his own life, once they had waited for two additional state security officers to arrive on scene, they walked up to the shooter who was laying on the ground, cleared the scene for their safety and then started life-saving efforts on him, however, he was declared deceased at the scene. After that, two other state troopers also showed up on scene.

Our detectives arrived on scene, they conducted interviews with the officers on scene, photographed the area, downloaded body-worn cameras, in-car videos and did round counts for all the officer to ensure that no rounds were fired.

On scene again were two troopers, two capitol security officers, two Lansing Township P.D. officers and also two LPD officers. The search was done after the scene was secured of McRae's residence with a search warrant that was authored by MSU P.D. along with LPD. At the residence, a cell phone was collected, journals of sorts, miscellaneous writings and fired 9 millimeter casings. McRae's father was also interviewed on scene by the MSP detectives at the Lansing Operations Building.

Once the residence search at the residence was completed, detectives began a surveillance canvass to attempt to track the shooters once he cleared the MSU campus until he made contact with the LPD officers. They were able to track his journey from the campus to where he was made contact. They are conducting additional surveillance canvasses to see if we can find anything else on where he might have been. Detectives are also assisting with downloading information from McRae's phone following on CADA (ph) as two additional bus tickets were found in his possession.

Found on McRae were two handguns, the one that he shot himself with and another in his backpack that he was carrying. He also had a loaded magazine that was full to capacity in his left breast pocket. In the backpack, he had eight loaded magazines of 9 millimeter ammunition along with a pencil-sized pouch containing 50 rounds of loose 9 millimeter ammunition. He also had two empty magazines on his person as well.

Two pages of notes were found in his wallet, which was on his person as well. That was the note that indicated where he was going to visit and also kind of gave an indication of why he -- maybe a motive, but nothing that we can actually confirm just yet.

The investigation is ongoing, and at this time, we believe that there were no other subjects involved and McRae was the lone shooter in this incident.

We will now turn it over to Chief Sosebee.

CHIEF ELLERY SOSEBEE, LANSING POLICE DEPARTMENT: Thank you, Lieutenant. Good morning. I'm Ellery Sosebee. I'm the chief of police in Lansing. I'm going to start by saying that the Lansing Police Department through Mary Shore's (ph) office is assisting in this investigation as much as possible to make sure that we have complete closure in this incident.

I want to start by giving my condolences to the family of the victims of this tragic incident. Being a father of a son who is recently accepted to this great university, I can't imagine the pain that the families are feeling right now.

I want thank the officers who responded without pause to this critical incident. Many of those has been mentioned before were off-duty and dropped everything they were doing to come to assist, to make sure that there were no more losses of life and prevent this tragedy from getting any larger.

I want to thank the citizens who, along with the media's help, saw something and said something. Without them, we may not be in this position here today.

I'd like to clear up just a few things, a few top ticks of misinformation that we have been asked about, about either the accused McRae or the address, the Lansing address on Howe Street in the city of Lansing. LPD has not responded to any welfare checks for Anthony McRae. There was a welfare check at the address on Howe Street on February 5th but was not related to the accused. And LPD has not been called in any way to any shots fired at this address.

The call history for the accused in this situation is very limited, but I will share this with you now to hopefully avoid any questions in the future.

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