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Anguish Sweeps Nation After 19 Children, 2 Teachers Killed; Standoff With Gunman Inside School Lasted Up to an Hour; How U.S Gun Culture Stacks Up With The World. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 26, 2022 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. It is Thursday, May 26th. I'm John Berman live in Uvalde, Texas. Brianna Keilar is in New York this morning.

19 children and two teachers were killed behind me at the Robb Elementary School. I want to show you what's happened here overnight. You can see this new memorial has sprouted up, flowers all around the sign, balloons and now, just in the last few hours, these crosses, one for every one of the victims here.

This was a vigil overnight where the community came together, so much pain, so many tears. This is a small town, it has a small town feel, just over 15,000 people and so many of the people we talked to have connections to the victims.

Tess Maria Mata was ten years old, she was saving every dollar hoping to go to Disney World. Nevaeh Bravo, also ten, has been remembered as a young girl who put a smile on everyone's face. These are the stories that you will hear this morning. A fourth grade teacher who sacrificed herself protecting the children, a grieving father who found out his daughter died trying to save her classmates.

We have learned that by tonight all of the victims, their bodies will be released to funeral homes for arrangements.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And some new reporting this morning about the excruciating moments outside of the school during the shooting. One parent telling The Washington Post, quote, there were five or six of us fathers hearing the gunshots and police officers were telling us to move back. We didn't care about us. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying let's go, because that is how worried we were and we wanted to get our babies out.

We also have some new details about how this mass shooting unfolded. The 18-year-old gunman was on school grounds for up to an hour before law enforcement shot and killed him. Moments before his deadly attack, he apparently sent a series of chilling text messages, private messages, to a girl in Germany that he met online. An officer confronting the shooter outside of the school, but he still managed to get inside the building dropping a bag full of ammunition outside before he entered. President Biden is expected to travel to Uvalde here in the coming days to meet with victims' families.

BERMAN: All right. Joining me now is CNN's Adrienne Broaddus and Shimon Prokupecz, part of the CNN team on the ground here trying to tell this tragic story.

And, Adrienne, we are getting new details about the status of the bodies, the victims here.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and this is part of the next step, John, for these families. At least nine of the deceased have been -- those bodies have been released to the funeral home. This is where families can now come in and start preparing the funeral arrangements for their children.

There are two funeral homes here in town, on their website they have started to post the names of the deceased children. What will follow next will be their obituaries. Think about it, many of these kids were nine, ten. Their parents, Shimon, as you know, likely not planning, didn't think about writing an obituary. Parents are supposed to outlive their children.

So, they are preparing to do that now and the bodies that haven't been released, john, will be released later today.

BERMAN: And we are learning so much more about the victims themselves. And, Adrienne, as you say, I mean, these families, they were planning summer vacations. They never thought they would be planning funerals right now.

BROADDUS: No, today was supposed to be the last day of school. It was supposed to be the start of the summer break. And many of these students and their families were looking forward to this summer because, think of about it, for the last two years things haven't been normal. We were in the middle of a pandemic. So, they were planning to see their friends at camp and some children were just looking forward to advancing to the next grade.

I'm sure you remember when you were a third grader, preparing to go to fourth grade, because your friends had been in fourth grade and they told you so much about that teacher. And these teachers, two of them, who lost their lives at this school behind us likely had a profound impact on the students whose lives they touched.

BERMAN: They had a profound impact on generations of students here and that community is making that clear this morning.

Shimon, a more complete story in this investigation, more complete, but still some questions to be asked.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are. I mean, we really don't have a good accounting of why -- a good account of why it took police so long to storm this classroom.

BERMAN: Up to an hour. PROKUPECZ: He was in there up to an hour. This is the latest information that we've received yesterday from DPS at the governor's press conference, that it may have taken -- he was in there for up to an hour.

[07:05:08]

We also learned that the Border Patrol, the officers from those teams came in. They were the ones that ultimately stormed the room, part of this tactical team.

So, it took them to get here, it took some time to put this team together, but we still don't know why. Why didn't the officers, as they started getting to the scene, assemble and just go towards the gunfire? We are now getting reports of parents, parents who were here outside the school, rushing here to find out what was going on, and they can hear the gunshots and frustrated, wanting to go inside.

And I was just talking to someone about that and they said that one of the city officials here that it was complete chaos here. It just seemed like the police did not have good control over this situation and that it took some time, quite some time for police to get control of the situation.

But can you imagine your kids are inside this school and you're coming here and you're hearing gunfire and the police are just standing around? I mean, yes, there was stuff going on inside, but for what parents are seeing, they're seeing officers standing around and they're saying, well, how are you out here when there's gunfire inside? Who is dealing with this?

So, we need more information basically from the police on why it took so long. There could be a good reason for it and I want to give them, you know, some benefit of -- but I still think we do not have enough answers for these parents, for these victims and we're going to start seeing these stories now.

This is a tight community, everyone knows each other, this is a law enforcement community, people here who live in this community that are part of law enforcement, we know off-duty officers were rushing here whose kids were inside this school. So, we need a better accounting. We don't have a firm timeline even yet from the police on that.

So, there's still a lot that I think we need to learn on the tactics here and why the officers did what they did. Because officers -- you know, we've covered so many of these and it's always you go towards the gunfire, you go towards -- you assemble a team, you get together quickly and you go in to try and neutralize the threat.

BERMAN: Shimon Prokupecz, Adrienne Broaddus, thank you both so much for the work you're doing here. I appreciate it.

In a moment, we are going to speak with Lieutenant Chris Olivarez. He does have new details on the investigation. He's part of the Department of Public Safety who had been providing information about what happened here. And, hopefully, we will get some answers to those questions that Shimon was just talking about.

This morning several victims of this shooting are still being treated for their wounds in hospitals around the area.

Joining us now is Dr. Lillian Liao, Pediatric Trauma Medical Director at University Health in San Antonio. Her hospital is caring for four of the victims of this massacre.

And according to officials, not the hospital, but according to officials, it includes the 66-year-old grandmother of the shooter. Doctor, I want to start with the status of the children you are still caring for. How are they doing this morning?

DR. LILLIAN LIAO, PEDIATRIC TRAUMA MEDICAL DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY HEALTH: The children that we received are all doing well. They are critical but stable and will be continuing to receive care over the next days to weeks.

BERMAN: You say critical but stable. Can you tell me more about what that means?

LIAO: That means that the patient is receiving ongoing, continuous care. It means that the patient sustained serious injuries where multiple physicians, nurses and other care providers have to monitor them in an interval that's more frequent than a minor injury.

BERMAN: And, again, at this point it's three children that you are still treating this morning?

LIAO: We are. We have -- we initially received three patients. And we're hoping that some of them can get released in the next few days.

BERMAN: That would be wonderful. I know I'm sure that those children would love to get home. And I know you can't give us specifics about the nature of the injuries or wounds or issues they were dealing with, but, broadly speaking, what were some of the things that you were treating?

LIAO: Broadly speaking, we were -- we were treating destructive wounds. And what that means is that there were large areas of tissue missing from the body and they required emergency surgery because there was significant blood loss.

[07:10:00]

BERMAN: Dr. Liao, I know this is your job but I also know that not every day is the same and that this had to be particularly difficult for you and all of your colleagues. Can you talk about that?

LIAO: Yes. You know, I think it was a difficult day for all of America. From our standpoint, we had the experience of Sutherland Springs at our level one pediatric trauma center. And in that experience, we learned and we prepared for this mass casualty event and gathered teams of surgeons, anesthesiologists, pediatricians very quickly and we waited. And also from the last experience, we realized that when we're dealing with high velocity firearm injuries, we may not get a whole lot of patients. And I think that's what hit us the most, not of the patients that we did receive, and we are honored to treat them, but the patients that we did not receive. I think that that is the most challenging aspect of our job right now.

BERMAN: I was at Sutherland Springs and what a commentary, I think, at this point that you have experienced. It says something that you and your teammates are experienced in dealing with mass shooter events, and, as you said, in a way, it is unusual to receive injuries that you can treat. I do also know that there were some -- some who arrived deceased already at the hospital, which makes it even harder.

As I said, officials have told us that one of the patients being treated in your facility is the grandmother, the 66-year-old woman who was shot by the killer here. Anything you can tell us about her condition this morning?

LIAO: She's critical but stable as well.

BERMAN: Critical but stable as well. Do you anticipate she would be able to be released in the coming days?

LIAO: I don't think we can talk about that. The hospital will release one --

BERMAN: Understood.

LIAO: What's that?

BERMAN: Understood. I get it.

Dr. Liao, how are you doing this morning?

LIAO: You know, I'm doing great. I have a whole day of surgeries planned for our team, looking forward to seeing our patients this morning on rounds and, you know, like everybody, probably a little shooken up, but my job is to be focused -- our job as the trauma center is to be focused on treating the patients that we did receive and that's -- that's what we're going to do today.

BERMAN: What you do every day. Dr. Liao, you are a wonderful physician, you are also a decent human being and we appreciate the work that you're doing. We appreciate your humanity and just know that we all feel like you do this morning. So, thank you.

LIAO: Thank you so much.

BERMAN: In moments, we will speak with one of the officials to get the latest on the investigation, including some of the unanswered questions.

Plus, we do have new details on the chilling messages sent by the gunman before he barricaded himself into this elementary school killing 21 people, 19 children, 2 teachers who were trying to save their lives. This is CNN's special live coverage from Uvalde, Texas. Stay with us.

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[07:15:00]

KEILAR: The massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children, mostly fourth graders, and two teachers, is the latest reminder that the United States' relationship with guns is a global outlier.

Here with a look now at how gun culture in the U.S. compares to the rest of the world is CNN Correspondent Tom Foreman. What did you find, Tom?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No one in the world owns guns the way that Americans own guns. Look at the numbers up here. There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, that means every single person you see today, imagine that person with a gun, and every fifth one, give them a couple of guns. That's how many guns are in America. Next time you are stuck in a traffic jam, think to yourself more guns in this country than cars. That's one way of looking at it.

This is very high compared to the world. At that rate of 120.5 per 100 people, the next two closest once are the Falkland Islands down by Argentina with 62 per 100. And look at this Yemen, over by Saudi Arabia and Oman over there, they've been locked in conflict, armed conflict for seven years now, they have far less than half as many guns as people have in the United States.

Compared to the rest of the world here is another way of looking at it. There are 330 million people in the United States, 393 million guns in the United States.

[07:20:06]

The rest of the world, 7.4 billion people, look at that, 7.4 billion compared to 330 million, they have 464 million guns, more, yes, but by per capita, not even close. Total number of civilian guns in the world almost half in the United States, just over half for the rest of the world.

One other way of looking at this, though, is also to note that it's not evenly distributed, of course. In the United States this is how it breaks down, 44 percent of U.S. households have a gun in the house somewhere, 44 percent, again, pushing up toward half. And 32 percent of U.S. adults personally own a gun, Brianna. The bottom line is nobody in the modern world has owned guns at this rate as a country and the numbers people going up.

KEILAR: Yes. So, one way to think of it is if you look at five people, right, you might think of giving ten guns to one person and no guns to a couple of people. It's really extraordinary.

FOREMAN: It's remarkable how this breaks down. And when you think of it that way, when you think of all the people you see, all the cars you see, and just imagine a gun every time you see one today, you're still not keeping up with how many guns are out there.

KEILAR: Tom, thanks for putting that into context. Berman?

BERMAN: CNN has obtained chilling text messages sent by the Texas gunman to a girl in Germany just minutes before the killing here at the Robb Elementary School.

CNN's Drew Griffin joins us now with the details. Drew, what have you learned?

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: John, this conversation between these two people started just a few weeks ago online, but the last messages coming in real-time as this horrific crime began to unfold.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN (voice over): This is the text conversation captured just moments before the 18-year-old shooter would attempt to kill his grandmother, then, in his words, shoot up an elementary school. You know what I'm going to do right now, he writes. Tell me, is the response. I can't, since my grandpa hasn't left. I'm waiting for this dude to leave.

Shortly after 11:00 A.M., Texas time, the suspect then complains about his grandmother and his phone bill. I'm waiting for this bitch. I'm going do something to her right now. She's on with AT&T about my phone. It's annoying. Five minutes pass, then, I just shot my grandma in the head. I'm going to go shoot up an elementary school right now.

That last message sent at 6:21 P.M. German time, which would have been 11:21 A.M. in Uvalde, Texas. 11 minutes later, police received their first call of a shooting at Robb Elementary School. The person on the receiving end of the text, a 15-year-old girl in Germany. She had never met him in person. They connected through a livestreaming app called Yubo, then Facetimed, texted, and he sent her videos of himself. She says the shooter told her he had bought some ammo, Monday, but she told CNN she had no idea what he was planning.

She's not the only person he was communicating with. The shooter's Instagram account showed a photo of two AR-style weapons and tagged another young woman who he messaged the morning of the shooting, saying, I'm about to -- but didn't finish his sentence, and then, I got a little secret.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: John, the girl who spoke to us with her mother's consent said the previous conversations weren't really alarming to her but for one, she told us, when the shooter allegedly said he liked to throw dead cats at people's houses, alarming, but not enough for her to send any kind of warning. John?

BERMAN: Drew, I've got to say, I know, again, the idea that he was communicating, there were words out there, but people have to understand what they mean and that's just not always the case. Drew Griffin, thank you so much for that report.

In just moments, we are going to speak with one of the officials on the latest in this investigation as parents do say they were kept from going inside the school to try to save their children.

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[07:25:00]

BERMAN: Welcome back. I'm John Berman in Uvalde, Texas, at the Robb Elementary School.

21 families here are broken and struggling to make sense of the loss of their loved ones. This morning, we do want to remember them.

Uziyah Garcia's uncle described him as a great kid, full of life who loved everything on wheels and video games. His grandfather said he was the sweetest little boy he had ever known. He had two sisters. He was ten years old.

Tess Marie Mata loved TikTok dances, Ariana Grande and the Houston Astros. Her sister says she was saving money so that the whole family could go to Disney World. She was ten years old.

The father of Amerie Jo Garza says his daughter was trying to do everything she could to save her classmates. He says his little love is now flying high with the angels above.

KEILAR: Eva Mireles was a fourth grade teacher at Robb Elementary and she had been an educator for 17 years. She enjoyed running, hiking, biking and spending time with her family.

And Irma Garcia, the second teacher killed in the shooting, she was an educator for 23 years and she is remembered as sweet, kind and loving. Loved ones say she sacrificed herself protecting the kids in her classroom. She was a hero. She was loved by many and will truly be missed.

Xavier Lopez's mother says she will never forget his smile which could cheer anyone up.

[07:30:04]

He was excited to start middle school which was only months away.