Former NYPD det. on deadly school shooting in Oregon

But let's go back to our top story, which is this elementary school shooting in Bend, Oregon. Jonah just handing me some new information from the AP. They're saying at least five people are dead following this elementary school shooting that occurred at the Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. As I mentioned, about four or five hours outside of Portland, 100 miles away. They told us a little earlier at this point, we don't have a number of victims, but we do know the children are among the victims. There are some conflicting information as to exactly what happened. We know the shooter shot dead inside the school. But based on the information coming out of Bend, Oregon, it doesn't appear as if the entire shooting took place in the school. We do have a Facebook video from the Bend, Oregon police. They're putting some of the preliminary information into perspective for us. So, Brian, when we get a chance, let's cue that up. Let's tee that up and play that for viewers. 450 children that go to Silver Rail Elementary and about 40 plus staff so as you can imagine the process of getting all of those people safely out of the building and down to Journey Church is a real challenge but we're working on it so we ask people to be patient we got to be really thorough and make sure each area of the building is cleared leading what uh the search right now through the Bend police, Bend police are handling they're the lead on this investigation uh i came in late We are still investigating that. It may have been a bystander. What gun was used? I don't have that information right now. So just to recap what she said, the shooter is dead. We don't know if police shot the shooter or if a bystander was the one that was able to take that person out. We believe the shooter to be male. Unclear what his connection is to the community or to the school. All of those things unanswered at this point. Um, what police had said initially is that authorities received a call about shots fired out, fired into a car outside of the Silver Rail Elementary 12:59 local time. They arrived on scene within minutes. So by one oh two cops were on scene there. Uh, and then they started getting a number of nine one one calls that came from inside the school. They say the attacker was shot and went down inside the school shortly after police arrived. But again, not not clear if it was shot by a bystander, self-inflicted, shot by police. All those details will come out as this investigation continues. They said at about 6 p.m. Eastern time, so roughly 3 p.m. Pacific, they were in the process of going room to room and evacuating each of the people who were in that school. At the time, the police said this is the kind of thing that we never want to see happen in Bend, Oregon. You know, from what I understand from listening to what some people are saying about Bend, Bend appears to be this kind of little safe haven in the Pacific Northwest, the type of place that people retire to or the kind of place that gets families away from big cities, inner cities with all of our inner city problems. They choose a smaller community of about 100,000 people, you know, the kind of place where the kids walk themselves to school and walk themselves home. You know, maybe people lock their doors. Maybe they don't. It is interesting to note it is an open carry state. We will see as the investigation continues how that may have played out in all of this. if it was in fact some, you know, a bystander walking by who happened to be carrying a weapon that was able to take this person out or what the situation was. All right. So what we want to do right now is bring in Michael Alcazar. Michael is a former NYPD. He is somebody who is going to be able to provide great perspective on this for us. Hey, Michael, thanks for being with us tonight. We appreciate it. Good evening. What a tragic situation that we're hearing about. I know it's preliminary at this point, but from what the information is coming out and being reported by the Associated Press, five people are believed dead. We believe among them at least one adult, so presumably, possibly the rest are children. What is your initial takeaway on this? Well, my question is, like, I'd like to know how he gained entry into the school. Does he have a relationship with the school? Did he attend it before or currently? how did he get this weapon? That's probably my question that I want to answer right away. How did he access this weapon? We don't know how old he is. Did he get it from his parents? Where does he live? So I'm sure the police right now are executing warrants where he lives and trying to find out what kind of information they can get from him, where he got the weapon, the computer, checking his computer, his social media. Did he leave a manifesto? I mean, I think that's a lot, but that's exactly the steps we would follow up on after a tragedy like this. Yeah. As I was just mentioning, Ben seems to be a really tight knit community. It's only about one hundred thousand people. So theoretically, it's a small enough community that everybody knows everybody. Everybody sees everybody. And so if he is a part of the fabric of this community, chances are somebody or a lot of people know something. And as we mentioned, it's an open carry state. So does that, in your mind, play into how investigators, presumably the FBI, if they take the lead on this, how they will approach this? Potentially, it's not, you know, an illegal weapon that was, you know, obtained some place or stolen from somewhere. There's a potential that this is a person who had a legal weapon on him. Yeah, we don't we don't we don't know the age. Right. We don't know the age of the shooter. So we don't know if he's a teenager or an adult. Did he have the weapon legally? And I tell you, you know, open carry states, most people don't open carry. It's rather unusual. Even in an open carry state, people will still call the police, you know, to check out this person. So, yeah, that's what I would check out right away. Again, we want to find out how he gained entry. They're going to check. They're going to canvas for surveillance videos. They're going to talk to the witnesses that were there on the scene. And again, they're going to try to determine how this unfolded and how it ended. Yeah, absolutely. I have young kids who here in the Northeast, even at their very, very young age, go through active shooter drills, although they're not told that there's gunmen. They're told that there's bears and coyotes. And I actually was in an active shooter drill. Well, it wasn't a drill. It was a false alarm inside of one of my children's schools. And it was absolutely terrifying to be in there and to not know what was happening outside of the walls while this investigation was unfolding. And thankfully, where I was, the situation was cleared pretty quickly. But we know that these active shooter drills are happening in communities all across the country. And oftentimes, the preparedness that happens is the difference between life and death. Do you expect that to also play a role in the outcome of this? Yeah, I would hope that the school was prepared for it. Like you said, they've done the drills. And now we know that police respond much quicker compared to Uvalde. They go right to the threat. We're not sure if police actually took out the shooter or if a good Samaritan did. So protocols hopefully were established and hopefully a lot of other, unfortunately, a lot of schools should practice this in preparation for this kind of like a tragic event. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned Uvalde and others. So many people that might be joining us tonight intimately know what it means to be a part of a school shooting because they live through Newtown, which is, of course, in our viewing area and a story that we have been covering for the last decade plus. Do you think that enough is being done to prepare kids, to prepare teachers? One of the things I kept thinking as I was listening to the coverage of this is so often the teachers are the first and last line of defense in these kinds of situations. And we'll see if that was the case today. Yeah, many schools have resource officers assigned to the building now, to the school. I think it's incumbent for the, you know, the principals or the school officials to make sure that these doors lock behind them and that nobody in the public could just access it. Again, they do the drills and the kids are probably, well, they probably do it like a fire drill now, right? Unfortunately, this is the reality that, you know, we live in. You know, I know it's tragic and five people lost. Maybe some of the protocols that were established perhaps saved lives. And maybe that's why this threat was ended with less, you know, casualties. Yeah. So, again, just we want to reiterate for people the first call, the first 911 call came in at twelve fifty nine Pacific time. Police were on scene by one oh two. So three minutes, two to three minutes later. I mean, that's an incredibly fast response. We don't know the proximity to the from the school to the police department. But if potentially that response is the result of the drills, as we were talking, that alone might have saved lives in an elementary school, 450 kids, not to mention support staff and teachers. Yeah, that's pretty quick. I mean, FBI compiles these stats. The average active shooter currently is about five minutes from start to finish. And usually the average police response, unfortunately, is like about six to seven minutes. So that's a scary proposition. But like you said, this was pretty good response by law enforcement to this to this incident. All right. Michael Alcazar, we appreciate your time tonight. Thank you so much. We're going to continue to stay on this story and continue to you know discuss the unfortunate and tragic situation that occurred in Bend, Oregon, this afternoon.