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The Situation Room

Hospital Officials Provide Update on Shooting Victims; Minneapolis School Shooting Investigation. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired August 28, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have one child in critical condition presently. That's about all the detail we will be able to give out of respect for patient and family privacy.

So I'm going to hand off to Marty Shear from our EMS services to help walk you guys through the events and the perspective.

MARTY SCHEERER, EMS CHIEF, HENNEPIN HEALTHCARE: Good morning. My name is Marty Scheerer, M-A-R-T-Y S-C-H-E-E-R-E-R. I'm the EMS chief for Hennepin EMS.

I will try to maybe answer -- a little statement and answer some questions, if you want me to, Chris.

So from the EMS perspective, things went as well as they could be expected. We train for this, and things went well on that part. But no matter how much you train for it, it's still really difficult on the team. I think there's a lot of maybe unrecognized heroes in this event, along with the children that were protecting other children, which is really amazing to hear about.

I might be saying too much, but we had one kid that covered up another kid and took a shotgun blast to his back and things like that. And they were helping each other out. And so the teachers, the teachers were amazing. The teachers were getting shot at. They were protecting the kids.

They took all the kids outside to an area of safety, witnessed all this happen. The teachers were amazing. The kids were really upset, obviously. But they really did a great job of keeping the kids together, keeping them calm, and then taking them to an area of safety and really working with the parents. So the teachers were amazing. They are great.

Minneapolis police was amazing. They entered the building. Their objective is to neutralize any shooter in there, and they did it without hesitation and immediately to the building, which is amazing. That doesn't happen everywhere. So, the Minneapolis police deserve a lot of credit for this.

They also gave us a really good report of, we have potentially 20 patients in there, and that helps us in many, many ways. We notify the hospitals what we have coming, and we try to separate some of our patients. So we take many of the patients that are critical to having the Level I trauma center for pediatrics.

Then we take some to Children's Hospital that are less critical, and then we take some to North as well. So our whole team, our surgeons, the E.D., everybody did a fabulous, fabulous job.

[11:35:04]

But yes, it's really still tough on that team. Some people have asked, how do you triage the patients on the scene? So, it's really quick. In situations like this, it's pretty quick, if they're conscious or not. If they have gunshot wounds to the upper body or the head, they're obviously red patients.

Other people are going to be yellow patients. We try to load up one red patient, maybe two or three yellow patients in an ambulance, take them to the hospital. That all worked really, really well. Great response from our police and fire departments and other EMS services. And like I said, we train for this.

Most of us all have kids, though, so it's still really, really hard for our team. But they're doing pretty well. We gave most of the people the day off today that were there yesterday. But they will come back to work and do the same thing over again.

So, should I answer questions or (INAUDIBLE) here?

(CROSSTALK)

SCHEERER: Yes, questions later. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

DR. AARON ROBINSON, HENNEPIN HEALTHCARE: Good morning, everybody. My name is Dr. Aaron Robinson, A-A-R-O-N R-O-B-I-N-S-O-N. I'm the assistant medical director at Hennepin EMS. And I'm also an emergency physician at Hennepin Healthcare.

Yesterday was an incredibly tragic day. The medical directors were paged out a couple minutes after this had happened. And part of our job is to relay information and be a liaison between the hospital systems and the providers on scene.

The earlier you activate a mass casualty incident the better. We can mobilize resources faster and we can get the folks and the equipment there that are needed to help best care for our most critical trauma patients. When I was en route, I contacted EMS command, and they had information from police there were going to be upwards of 20 victims or more.

With that information and the resources that I knew that Hennepin Healthcare had provided, I activated the MCI within a couple of minutes after knowing that just to get resources mobilized, to get the folks there that needed to be in the upstaff of our emergency department for patients to be received.

In trauma, when you're talking about caring for a trauma patient in the pre-hospital setting out in the field, minutes and seconds matter. And our job in the pre-hospital setting is to perform lifesaving interventions like stopping the bleeding or helping somebody breathe. But every minute that a trauma patient spends on scene increases their chance of not having a good outcome and possibly dying.

So, it's a huge credit to the Minneapolis Police Department and the other first responders that entered the scene and secured it quickly. The scene was safe in a few minutes after the initial incident, and I credit our brave first responders for doing that. That allowed us to get the patients in and to get them to definitive care very, very quickly.

Those swift actions undoubtedly saved the lives of many of those children.

DR. THOMAS WYATT, CHAIRMAN OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, HENNEPIN COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER: Hi, everybody my name is Dr. Tom Wyatt, W-Y-A-T-T. I'm the chair of emergency medicine at Hennepin Healthcare.

The emergency department is the front door to our entire safety net organization. And while we deal with emergencies every day, it takes a lot of planning, preparedness, exercises, drills throughout the year to deal with an event such as what we experienced yesterday.

So it was really very, very helpful to us, as Dr. Robinson mentioned, to get that pre-notification of the types of -- the numbers and the types of injuries that we were going to experience. That allowed us to mobilize the appropriate resources.

Here at Hennepin, as a Level I trauma center both for adults and pediatric patients, we're able to mobilize a lot of resources very quickly. Luckily, this happened during the daytime and not the evening, so it was a lot easier for us to quickly mobilize some of those resources.

The amount of resources and amount of organization it takes to assemble those teams so that we can have a team ready for a patient when they come into our emergency department when they arrive at EMS is very impressive. And as I stated yesterday, I'm really proud to be part of this organization and all the different components of the teams that we had yesterday.

I listed some yesterday. And I know I missed some people, so I won't try to list them all, but there's a number of different specialists that come down to help us for these types of events. After the MCI response was over, as emergency providers, we unfortunately don't get to stop what we do.

We have to continue working. We have to continue to see the patients that are continuing to arrive to the emergency department. We have to continue to work the shifts that we are already there for. And that can take a toll as well once you try to process what you experienced in a mass casualty event such as this.

[11:40:01]

So, again, we received an outpouring of support from the local communities from across the nation. I have received messages and support from chairs of other emergency departments across the country. And it's just a -- it's been very meaningful to us and our team. So thank you for that.

I want to introduce Dr. John Gayken, who's one of our head trauma surgeons.

JON GAYKEN, HENNEPIN HEALTHCARE: Hello everybody thanks for coming today. My name is Jon Gayken, one of the trauma surgeons, J-O-N, G, as in George, A-Y-K-E-N.

So a lot has been said and a lot has happened over the last 24 hours. And the impact of yesterday's events will be felt throughout this community, through the country, and most notably through our hospital organization and the people that I work with.

But I think it goes most importantly to be stated that this is really about the families and the people that are impacted at the shooting yesterday and that we are just here to support them. I think the main message that I can portray is that we like to stand here as a hospital just sort of quietly waiting and being ready for whatever the hospital or the community needs.

And, unfortunately, yesterday, is something that I didn't think I would ever have to be part of. So I don't really have good words to describe it. But everybody in this hospital and this organization was there. And down to the EMS or the housekeepers, the nurses that weren't even part of the -- I will tell a quick story because it emphasizes it.

One of the victims came in. And in the emergency department, this was a nurse manager from another unit, didn't have anything to do with what we would normally respond to. And one of the children were very scared and alone because everybody was running about doing their jobs.

And she went into the C.T. scanner with the patient, putting herself basically in the harm's way of radiation, which normally you evacuate the room. She put a little lead on and stayed there and held her hand and held her hair while she went to the scanner, so she didn't have to go through it alone.

Those are the types of things we witnessed yesterday. I don't know that we can describe what they went through and what the actual events were like, nor I think we're supposed to be able to do that, but we can describe the things that we saw from our team members and from our hospital.

And it was as inspiring, as preserving for me as I can put words together. Taking care of one child that's injured is difficult. Eight of them is nearly impossible, but it happened yesterday.

And so the teams that came together that worked after the patients went out of the emergency rooms and they were triaged, the pediatricians, the neurosurgeons, the therapists, the pharmacists, I'm sure missing, medicine doctors, the other surgeons from other hospitals, our team, the outpouring of support from friends of family, past residents, past medical students, people of that just know what's going on.

So I can't say enough, other than thank you for the support. Our teams will need it.

SCHEERER: OK, I will answer some questions if anybody has something from anybody here.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) At one point, you had 10 patients coming in with gunshot wounds. I think you said about four of them needed surgery. I would almost assume 10 patients with gunshot wounds, all of them need surgery.

What differentiated those that stayed in the E.R. for treatment and those that were able to be -- get required surgery?

SCHEERER: I will jump right -- one thing we're really blessed with here is our surgeons come down to the E.D. right away, and so I will let the surgeons talk about it. Or maybe Dr. Wyatt?

GAYKEN: Yes, I think the way the trauma process in our hospital and many around the country is, the patients that are met and greeted, EMS gives updates to the emergency department physicians.

They have an opportunity if they think that something is going to be required, they think might require surgery or something develops when surgery is needed. But, yes, as they activate us, we come down, we work together. So it's the emergency department and our surgery trauma team interfacing with the patient and the condition together.

And then once the decision is made that they have a surgical sort of need, we make efforts to get them to the operating room. So that triage process happens real time and together. But then once they go into surgery, we a lot of times will take -- we take them up to surgery, we do whatever surgery they need.

And some gunshot wounds, to answer your question, don't always require surgery. Some can be managed what we call nonoperatively. And those sometimes have to do with extremity injuries that don't involve blood vessels. It may not involve the bones, but sometimes it will heal maybe if it's not a fracture that requires an orthopedic involvement.

[11:45:07]

But there are areas of the body, the chest and abdomen, where -- need exploration or sometimes in the head, of course. So there were some of those patients yesterday, and some required emergent operations in the end.

QUESTION: Can you give an update on the condition of the victims?

GAYKEN: I mean, I'm going to leave that to the...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I mentioned at the outset that we have six patients that are in satisfactory conditions, five children. We have two in serious condition, one adult, one child, and one patient yet in critical condition who is a child.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Correct. I believe one patient was discharged, yes. We started with 10.

GAYKEN: Yes. We're discharging one, maybe two this morning.

QUESTION: Six in satisfactory, three in serious and...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two in serious and one in critical condition.

QUESTION: And one in critical. Thank you.

QUESTION: The two in serious are expected to survive?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I believe so.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's more touch and go. I'd rather not share more detail at present.

QUESTION: I have a question for the doctor. Really appreciate you sharing -- Lana Zak, CBS News -- the story about a member of the health care team who was there just (OFF-MIKE) because I think the entire nation is feeling a bit of that.

And as you said, some -- your attention is on the families. And I understand that a member of your team was both working as a health care provider and a mother. Can you tell us anything about the critical care pediatric nurse Amy Dean Dreyer (ph) and her actions yesterday?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I -- we can't. I mean, our structure of how we protect patients and families doesn't allow us to comment specifically on circumstances. I'm sorry.

QUESTION: Understood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

QUESTION: I just wanted to give you an opportunity to praise one of your own.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would -- yes, I'm going to defer. I would say all the families are asking for prayers and support. So that's about as much as I'm willing to share. SCHEERER: We did have a number of people that have children at the

school. One of our paramedics has a student there. I know several nurses have students there, so it was impactful for the work (OFF- MIKE) yes.

QUESTION: Thank you.

What was that initial response like? How many EMS personnel, how many ambulances, what -- (OFF-MIKE)

SCHEERER: So, the question is, how many people responded to the scene?

So, initially, it came in as an active shooter. So, we activated plan one, which normally gets us about six ambulances and a supervisor and a doctor. But when we heard the 20 patients potential, then we go to plan three, which gets us about 20 ambulances. All of our medical direction team, everyone, and some mutual aid from other sources also back up our system.

So we had a really, really great response. Our team was actually at Station 27, which is like three or four blocks away. And so we were ready to go. We waited for the police to give us the OK to come in, and which took just a minute or two, and then we were on scene right away, and we started transporting right away.

And I think we transferred the first patient within less than 10 minutes of the call, the time the call came in, and then I think we were done transporting people after 25 minutes from the time the call came in.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

SCHEERER: I think we ended up using a dozen or so ambulances and transported 17, I believe is the number, to three different area hospitals.

Other questions? yes, please.

QUESTION: Can I just follow up on your point? Can you tell us more about how the community, and specifically here at Hennepin Healthcare, given the connection to the school, how they're dealing with this?

SCHEERER: You know, I can't speak -- everyone deals individually differently, but I know our team is really resilient and strong, and -- but you can train for this all you want, but ultimately it's still really challenging with little, little kids.

Yes. Yes. It's hard.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We would add, in terms of grief and handling trauma, it's day two, two, three, four, five, six where it starts to slow down and those deeper thoughts start to come.

SCHEERER: Yes. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we're supporting our teams. They're heroes over there, but they're human also. So...

SCHEERER: Yes, and we have great mental health resources as well. We have our psychiatric people come and met with a team. We do a hot wash. We have them chat with all the individual providers. We have other mental health resources in there.

But it's usually days or weeks later that really kind of hits home to everybody, and so we will see how it goes. But with kids, it's just once again a different element of the process that makes it more challenging, I think kids. And also when you get other first responders that are injured, that also is challenging.

[11:50:05]

So -- but I think overall our team is doing really well. We have a lot of trauma that happens and a lot of gunshot wounds. This one's just a little bit different, though.

Other questions for anybody?

QUESTION: Could you address some of the efforts that we made on site in terms of lifesaving measures that made the difference in terms of time needed to get the patients to the hospital?

SCHEERER: Sure. I will let Dr. Robinson address that.

ROBINSON: Beyond -- the overwhelming majority of these shooting-type scenarios, police are the ones that actually apply the tourniquets. That is a major key in trauma care to stop the bleeding.

When we're dealing with a trauma patient, the first step is to stop the bleeding, because they're not going to survive if they continue bleeding for a few minutes. So, the first couple steps is applying tourniquets to extremities to stop the bleeding and then applying pressure to other wounds that are maybe in the torso or in the trunk, as well as applying seals over any holes that we might find in the chest from bullets or knives or anything.

Those are the key things for initial lifesaving measures, followed by helping people breathe if they're not breathing effectively and then transporting them to the hospital.

QUESTION: So, specific to this -- I know that you are not disclosing a lot of information in respect to patient privacy, but specific to this, can you talk about some of the things that were done that really made a difference and what that time frame was?

ROBINSON: Yes, leaving specifics out of it, the really critical things that were done was bleeding was controlled quickly and people's torso, those wounds were bandaged and packed very quickly.

That made a key difference, because we have got upwards of 20 patients that are potentially bleeding to death. And that is a lot of blood that is needed very quickly if we need to give those folks blood at the hospital. So, big credit to stop the bleeding, and that all happened within one or two minutes of police getting on scene. After they secured the scene, they were the ones attending to the

victims and applying those lifesaving interventions.

SCHEERER: I will jump in and add a little bit on time. Dr. Robinson talked about time.

So we're pretty blessed here. Our crews got there quick, transported to the hospital quick. They get to the E.D. quick. The surgeons are there quick. Ultimately, they need surgery. They have to sew up the areas that are bleeding. And so the quicker we can get them to surgery and our surgical team is really the key. They talk about the golden hour. It's not an hour. You don't have an hour.

You have minutes. So our team did great.

QUESTION: When you have a victim who is a bigger body mass, and they are hit with gunfire, that's one thing. And, of course, it depends on where they're hit.

But when you have a child, it means a smaller body mass. Can you talk about the scope of devastation when it's a child?

GAYKEN: I mean, I think -- so the psychological aspect, I think I mentioned a little bit earlier how managing one child is difficult. Managing a multitude of children at the same time takes an enormous amount of resources.

But I think, if you're talking specifics about ballistics and injury, is that -- am I getting your question? Like, you're talking about what the bullet does to the specific body part?

QUESTION: Not necessarily, just that you have a smaller body mass and a bullet.

GAYKEN: Yes.

QUESTION: And on a smaller body mass, the potential for the devastation (OFF-MIKE)

GAYKEN: Yes. And so, yes, children, when they're injured, have a unique ability to sort of maintain their circulation.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: So we have been listening in to hospital officials there in Minneapolis with the Hennepin Healthcare system. They said that there were nine patients still there recovering from that shooting at the Annunciation School yesterday.

And they said that they have one child in critical condition, one child and one adult in serious condition. The rest of the patients out of the nine, including five children, are in satisfactory condition. And they talked about stories of heroism with one child who was shot in the back because that child was trying to protect another child, his friend.

Just incredible stories coming there from those hospital officials. And we now are just getting in this new video of the terrifying scene inside the Annunciation Catholic School right after the time of the shooting. I want to warn you here, this is incredibly disturbing, but it is important to show you this.

[11:55:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are they? Where's the shooter? Where's the shooter?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No one knows.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my gosh.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Laura Coates, just watching that video, it gives you chills to see the horror on the faces of those children, the faculty members, many of them still ducking, worrying that more gunshots could be coming through. That really just tells the story right there of the horror during all of this, Laura.

LAURA COATES, CNN HOST: It really does.

It goes back to a phrase that was used in that press conference of unrecognized heroes and the teachers and the staff who kept their head to be able to try to get children out. I mean, we deliver our children to school every single day and we hope and we can trust these people with their minds and their rearing in terms of intellectual.

But now you see that they're trying to protect them, throwing their bodies on children, trying to guide them, scared and trying -- many of whom -- remember, this is a brand-new school year. Many of these teachers and students are just beginning their bonds and forming those relationships. And they're trying to trust the authority figure immediately.

Even hearing stories about not wanting kids to be alone. You heard that press conference, somebody going in back with a C.T. scanner without any protection from the radiation on just to hold a child's hand, so they're not feeling alone. This is happening here.

And what strikes me too, Pam, and I got really choked up thinking about this moment, is that when you have your kids in these drills, kids want to run. They want to find a way to safety. And in this neighborhood setting right now, we're seeing a Starbucks just a few blocks away, literally down the hill.

And you're hearing from the families where children were running out and trying to get to safety to a place that familiar to them, whether it's the Starbucks right here, whether it's the Kowalski's. As parents, we try to give our children landmarks and tell them where to go to get and find safety. It was not in the school when they were trying in the area to find. You're hearing from people who are business owners and beyond who are

seeing kids running into Starbucks and trying to comfort them and give them some level of peace in that moment. And you also heard about the idea of those who are the first responders saying that they trained for this.

The students are training for it. Law enforcement trained for it. The people who are involved in the trauma and the help are trying to train for it. And it's still difficult for them. But I want to just point out one really important thing about the police presence that was there and their response, that they were able to give advanced notice to this hospital known as a trauma center in an effort to try to get them prepared of what was coming.

They were able to prepare for the patients who were there knowing about upper body injuries and beyond and just the mobilization of the resources. And finally, Pam, we often hear about that golden hour, as was referenced, the time that was so critical to get help not only into the area to minimize the pre-hospital trauma, but we're told it's not a golden hour.

It's a golden minute. They have very little time, and these kids and these families what they're dealing with in the midst of a community, as you see, cars are going by. There's a man with a cross that is going up and down the street here. There are flowers. There are community people who are coming out from their businesses, flowers in their arms, signs of hope.

And they're all delivering them to the place where students right now should be about to go to recess, lunch, and instead wondering what has happened.

BROWN: Yes, so much to process. I can't get over that little fifth grader. We played sound from him earlier in the show and he talked about how he tried to hide under the pew and his buddy Victor (ph) went right on top of him to protect him.

I don't know if it's the same one we heard there from the hospital official who described the child who took a gunshot blast to the back trying to protect a friend. But those are the kinds of stories of heroism that we're hearing out of there.

And, also, as we're watching that video of those children, little kids running out of the mass, again, this is a preschool through eighth grade school, and just the horror. You see some of them looking, making sure their friends are OK, making sure they're getting out.

And we have learned from our John Miller, Laura, that the shooter here, the plans were even worse than what transpired, that the shooter, according to law enforcement sources, had a plan to go inside and inflict even more harm.

But the doors of that church were locked, and also that the shooter, as we know, barricaded the doors, wanted to trap those children inside. It's just horrific.

COATES: It is, and, of course, also the planning that went into this to try to be able to maximize the carnage.