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CNN NEWSROOM

California College Town Mass Murder; Awaiting Police Press Conference

Aired May 24, 2014 - 20:00   ET

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


DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. Hello, everyone. I'm Deborah Feyerick in for Don Lemon.

We have been waiting for police and the sheriff's department in Santa Barbara, California County. They're expected at any moment to come out and have a press conference for reporters to tell us what they've learned about the shooting that happened last night. Six people dead.

The killer, the gunman also dead. In the past couple of hours, a name has emerged of the alleged gunman, Elliot Rodger. He is the man believed to have driven around the college town of Isla Vista shooting from his moving car.

We've learned a few things about Elliot Rodger from all places his own words. He posted videos of himself to YouTube. Dark, brooding rants about rejection and revenge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELLIOT RODGER, SUSPECTED GUNMAN: Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: And just looking at that, it is so chilling.

Sara Sidner there in Santa Barbara with that press conference is going to be happening in just moments. He's detached, he's sardonic, he's. you know, manipulative. And we're now learning that there may have been some victims inside a home believed to be is his own apartment. What are you learning?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. Apparently three victims first possibly stabbed inside of that apartment. But we are still waiting to hear word on all of the details from the sheriff's department here, and that's what we're doing. We're standing outside waiting to hear from them. We hear that it's been delayed again for another 15 or 20 minutes or so.

I can tell you that we have been talking to different people. Family members came out today completely unexpected, came out in front of these microphones. He wanted to say something. He wanted to express his absolute sorrow of losing his 20-year-old son, Christopher Ross Martinez, and he said, look, I want to talk to parents. He said, you never think it's going to happen to you, but it happened to us and it can happen to your child.

His son was going to the market, trying to get something to eat. He was shot and killed there, according to his father.

We are waiting for details from the sheriff's department on the suspect. They have not actually yet named the suspect. But we do know from a representative of the family of Elliot Rodger that they were talked to and they do believe that Elliot Rodger is the shooter.

A very chilling detail as you listen to some of his YouTube videos. There are dozens of them, but in one in particular he details, he details what he is going to do. He says, the next day, talks about going to the sorority house and slaughtering, his words, slaughtering all of the blond girls inside. He talks about his frustration, he talks about not having a girlfriend, not having love, not having had sex and he was a 22-year-old who was in college and that this was wrong and that he was a victim.

He talked about hating everyone who had been able to have relationships, particularly the boys that did attract females, really chilling details coming from his own words on YouTube that he posted. So some of the students have been watching that incessantly trying to understand just what happened here.

We talked also to someone who witnessed a horrific scene outside of one of the sorority houses. His name was Kyle Sullivan. He was a brand-new student, first year, 19 years old, came here from Hawaii. He saw a scene he just could not believe and tried to help three girls. Two of them died in front of him. One of them, he thinks has survived. She was taken away in an ambulance, trying to talk to her mother.

But this has been a very difficult time as you might imagine for the students who go to the colleges here. All of them very worried. They say they jump when they see a car go by because most of what this man did was drive by, shoot, and kill people -- Deborah.

FEYERICK: Amazing. And you think about just how much thought went into this. And again, we refer to this 140-page manifesto that's titled "My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger."

Sara Sidner, thanks so much. We are keeping a close eye on you. You are keeping a close eye on the press conference. We know that that's going to be coming up just in a little well. Right now I want to go back to our panel.

And I want to ask Jeff Gardere, who's really been walking us through all of this writing that this gunman did. And again, you think about this. Reading through this, I have to tell you, as a literature major, this sounds like he's writing the story, you know, of -- for example, David Copperfield. I was born.

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL AND FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: That's right.

FEYERICK: I made friends, I had a life of privilege. And then my life was not so privileged. It's just -- I mean I hate to give him any credit, but this is fascinating to read.

GARDERE: Yes. Absolutely. Again, this is about his universe, his world. Everyone else in this world are just characters in it. He's the main person. So anything that doesn't work in his favor, anything that's even normal he takes it as being inappropriate and abnormal and it is against him.

The other thing which is interesting in reading through this, you don't see anything written about having any sort of hallucinations. He's not hearing voices telling him certain things, he's not seeing certain spirits guiding him.

FEYERICK: Right.

GARDERE: There are no voices telling him to do anything. Everything we see is about a very skewed perception of the world. Depression, delusional thinking and hate. Sadness, depression, hate.

FEYERICK: What's also fascinating to me is because, on the YouTube video, he says, oh, well, girls just didn't like me, girls didn't gravitate towards me. I can't have a relationship with girls. Let's make this very, very clear. He hated women. He hated girls.

GARDERE: That's right.

FEYERICK: He had one friend who was a girl and that was when he was a little kid. So I'm sorry, I don't -- what does it tell you? Because I'm not buying that he couldn't get a girlfriend.

GARDERE: Because --

FEYERICK: He hated women.

GARDERE: He hated women, but as part of that delusional thinking, the women became the symbol of everything that was wrong in his life. He gravitated to that and had very skewed exposure to sex later on in life. May have died a virgin from what we know. But what's fascinating with all of this, with every single incident with a woman, he read into it that the woman hated him.

FEYERICK: Right.

GARDERE: He read into their minds that they weren't attracted to him. He didn't even talk to these women.

FEYERICK: Right.

GARDERE: He just assumed. They looked at him and they abhorred him.

FEYERICK: So --

GARDERE: So this was all in his head.

FEYERICK: It was all in his head. You know, when you think about that, Brian, the fact that you have a guy like this who is just so warped in his thinking, where do you take this? Where do you -- what are your thoughts on all of this?

BRIAN CLAYPOOL, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, I really do think there is some credence to his fact that he's rejected repeatedly by women. Remember, privilege breeds pressure. There's almost more social pressure the higher you get in the social echelon. He went to boarding school in London. He had very high expectations of him. He lived in this privileged life.

So out here in Southern California, unlike a lot of other places I think in the country, your measure of how accepted you are in society, how successful you are is the woman or the women you have with you.

Look at Donald Sterling situation.

FEYERICK: Right.

CLAYPOOL: This man was so worried about his image that he would actually hire attractive women to be with him.

FEYERICK: Yes. No question.

CLAYPOOL: So I think there was something to that.

FEYERICK: And I agree.

We're going to squeeze in a quick break. And one thing I want to say. Privilege breeds pressure. Deal with it.

We're going to a break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: We want to welcome our international viewers from our sister station CNN International. Right now we're waiting on a news conference to update us on the deadly shooting spree near Santa Barbara, California. A college town. It's a rampage that left six people dead. The gunman also killed. Eleven others hurt.

It will be the first news conference since the name Elliot Rodger was released by his own family as the man believed to have opened fire from the driver's seat of his car near Santa Barbara.

Elliot Rodger, he's also dead. Police found him in his car which crashed. He had a bullet wound to the head. Not clear whether he turned the gun on himself or whether he was shot by sheriff's deputies in the fire fight. They were chasing that car down the road.

Again, we're waiting for a live press conference. You can see the photograph there or the image right there on the corner of your screen. That can happen at any moment. Of course, we'll take that live.

I want to bring back our panel, back to the conversation to talk about this. We've got clinical and forensic psychologist Jeff Gardere, criminal defense attorneys Holly Hughes and Brian Claypool, and retired law enforcement agent Lou Palumbo. So, Holly, we look at this, we look at what's going on here. First of all, what are your impressions now that you know that there's a manifesto, having seen some of the videos. How do you make sense of this and the kind of person that this young man clearly was?

HOLLY HUGHES, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, one of the things that Brian pointed out, especially his lawyers, we're looking for that time line. We need to know how old that manifesto is, when was it written. But it seems very clear in the few things that you and Dr. Jeff have been discussing that these problems go all the way back to childhood. He was slighted as a child. He didn't get the toy he wanted. The ice cream lady didn't like him.

This is an ongoing pervasive problem. Something should have been done long before we got to this point and that's not to point a finger and say somebody else is to blame, but it should have been addressed. If he presented these issues when he was a young child and this has always been a problem, and I think it was Dr. Jeff at the top of our show talking about he's brooding, he's depressed, you know, he's exhibiting these particular personality traits, why was there no institutionalization when he was younger, you know?

We talked about he was on meds. What was the diagnosis? There's so much unknown right now. But it's disturbing to me that we could have gotten this far along and I think Brian nailed it when he said, when did they know and what did they know? That and my answer, how do we prevent this in the future?

FEYERICK: My guess is we're probably going to learn a lot more about the kind of medications he was on, the kind of treatment that he possibly received. Clearly if the family reached out to law enforcement, which it appears they did, they were trying to get some help.

But, Lou, I want to ask you, because you said, look, when go for a gun permit, you are tested. You undergo a mental evaluation. Look. We've been reading -- Dr. Jeff and I have been reading through this manifesto, this is not necessarily crazy in the way it's worded, the way he writes. He says crazy things. But this is a guy, dollar to doughnuts, he could have talked his way into sanity because this is not necessarily crazy at first glance. So how do you counteract that?

LOU PALUMBO, FORMER LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Well, you know, to speak to this topic, you know, this Minnesota multi-facets screening test is over 500 questions some of which they ask you redundantly in different forms and it's designed to detect or pick up personality defects among other things.

I will tell you that if he was under some type of psychiatric care, which I believe I heard that he was, that psychiatrist should be able to give us substantially more insight into exactly what was going on with this young man.

But I go back and say this to you. The parents acknowledged the fact that there was a substantial problem with this individual. They brought it to the attention of law enforcement. Brian is right. We need to find out exactly what was brought to their attention and whether or not they were remiss.

These are good law enforcement agencies in California. I suspect that had they obtained knowledge, especially to the part of this manifesto where he spoke definitively about harming these young girls --

(CROSSTALK)

GARDERE: Lou, Lou, Lou, very quickly. Lou, very quickly.

FEYERICK: Jeff.

GARDERE: Here's the issue. This kid does not appear to have been, from what I'm reading, not a paranoid schizophrenic. Severe personality disorder, delusional thinking, ideas of reference where he feels that people are always out to get him, always talking about him. But the problem here and what we see with many parents, when we're dealing with these personality disorders, paranoid personalities and so on, they are not the type who are to be committed for the simple fact they're not hearing voices, they're not seeing things.

Their behavior is very odd. They can get it together. This kid appears to have been very, very intelligent. I suspect the parents did everything -- well, I suspect the parents were working with him and couldn't handle him at the end.

(CROSSTALK)

FEYERICK: We'll definitely -- OK, so panel, I want you to stand by. I want to bring in Kyung Lah. She is there in Isla Vista. She just got through watching a video, a store owner who caught the shooting on surveillance camera.

Kyung, what do you see?

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's -- there are parts of it we simply can't show because it captures the exact moment of when the shooting happened and you actually see a victim get shot and it's very, very, very graphic but it really does capture how frightening that moment is when the bullets were whizzing into a particular store. And we also have heard a number of iPhone videos that have caught the gunfire on the streets as well.

So you get this visceral sense of how many bullets there were, multiple bullets at every single scene, how frightening it was for all the people involved, people are diving for the floor, they're screaming, they're scared. In every single scene, there were nine active crime scenes here throughout Isla Vista. A very sleepy college town and it was frightening for every single moment that this BMW stopped and then took aim at anyone on the street.

So that's really what you get the sense of. You get this visceral feel of how frightening those moments were, how scared the people who were seeing these bullets coming toward them, and a lot of confusion. They simply didn't understand what was going on.

That confusion, Deb, that's lingering as we are starting to see more and learn more about this disturbed young man -- Deb.

FEYERICK: And these young people are definitely going to have post- traumatic stress.

Kyung, at any point do you ever get a picture of the gunman? Do you ever see him or even just a shadow of him interacting with anybody, for example, who he was taking aim at?

LAH: Not in anything that we've seen, not anything we've heard, and not in anyone we've spoken to. No one saw him exiting the car, no one saw him say anything or heard anything from him. All they saw was either the bullet, they saw him ramming people with his car. That's all witnesses saw.

What is interesting is that very, very few people here actually saw this man, you know, socializing with anyone. We did speak with a store owner who said, oh, he would come into the store and buy sodas or he, you know, came into the store frequently to buy things but he never actually seemed to have a relationship with anyone here in this town.

It's very unusual if you just look around here. This is a place packed with young people who are in college, who want to socialize. And that no one knew this man. That's what's really extraordinary here.

FEYERICK: And even more interesting the fact that he seemed to know them.

All right. Kyung Lah, we're expecting a news conference coming out of the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office any minute now. We're going to be bringing it to you as soon as it happens, but right now we're going to take a very quick break and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: And we want to welcome all our international viewers from around the world. Thank you for joining us.

Right now we are waiting on a news conference to update us on a deadly shooting near Santa Barbara, California. You can see the podium there with all the mike set up. The rampage killed six people. The gunman also dead. Not clear whether he killed himself or whether he was killed by deputies who responded to this rampage.

I want to bring back CNN's Kyung Lah.

And Kyung, you have obtained a pretty gruesome, though fascinating piece of video which shows the movements of the car as it made its way down the street. Describe it for us again.

LAH: The video is surveillance video inside a store as the shooting took place. The gunman aiming into the store. You do not see the vehicle. But what you see inside is extraordinarily graphic. You see a young man getting shot, bleeding all over the floor. It is so gruesome we simply cannot air that part of the video. But you get the sense of how frightening it was inside that store. That's just one of a number of places where there have been cordoned off scene areas. The police at one point said that there were nine active scenes, crime investigation spots, and that's where they were collecting bullets. There were a number of bullets collected earlier in the day. And this area right behind me, that was cordoned off.

There were some 20 bullets that were just in this one small area, so it really paints a picture of how many time this gunman chose to fire in various spots, how many people were frightened. You hear this -- you hear the screaming, you hear the bullets, and iPhone videos that we've also heard. So it is a -- it is a moment, a 10-minute period of time that people here across this sleepy college town are describing with sheer terror, and it is absolutely visceral when you hear the video and when you see images like the surveillance video we've seen.

FEYERICK: And Kyung, there's also something that you've learned as well, and that is that there may have been some victims inside the apartment believed to be the apartment of the gunman. What do you know?

LAH: What we know is that people inside this apartment building say that the suspect lived there. We want to show you this piece of video that our affiliate captured, and you can see that there are three bodies being removed from this one apartment. That apartment, according to neighbors, is where the gunman live. That's what neighbors tell us. People who were there who saw the bodies being removed say they, too, saw three bodies coming out of that apartment.

We do not know who those bodies are. We don't have identification. We don't know if they were roommates. We don't know if they were family members. What we do know is that they came out of that apartment and neighbors are telling us that that is where the gunman lived. So we're hoping to get some clarification in this news conference that is coming up shortly. We're hoping that the Sheriff's Department will really be able to enlighten us with a lot of gaps right now that -- on what was happening with this young man's mind.

FEYERICK: Right. And so, and Kyung, just so we have a timeline on this, when were those bodies discovered? Just to remind the audience, we -- these shootings took place last night about 9:25 California time. When were these bodies discovered?

LAH: We're not exactly sure when the call went out to authorities. What we can tell you is that what witnesses say they saw, that the bodies started coming out in the early morning hours. So it was after the shooting. It was several hours after the shooting that the officers arrived and then they started -- they made the discovery and then they started removing the bodies. So that is what the timeline appears to be.

We do have that body count right now from the police department -- from the sheriff's department of six victims plus the gunman. We believe that that includes all the victims, that these are not additional. That the three inside the apartment are part of the six total victims plus the one gunman. That is how we understand it. FEYERICK: And, very quickly, the young man who you see shot in the video, is there any sense of his condition or where he is now?

LAH: From what the store says, that young man died. That it's really hard to imagine having seen that video now, how that young man could have survived. We saw quite a bit of it. And that's really why we can't show it, and the store owner, frankly, doesn't want his family to see it.

FEYERICK: Of course, of course. All right. Kyung Lah, thank you so much. We're going to have you stand by. We've got our panel at the ready. We're expecting news conference from the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office coming up at any moment. We're going to bring it to you as soon as it starts. For right now, we're going to take a very quick break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: Right now we are waiting on a news conference to update us on the deadly shooting rampage in the -- in the Santa Barbara, California, college town of Isla Vista. The shooting left six dead, the gunman also killed. Eleven others hurt. Several in surgery today.

You can see people setting up the microphones there.

Let me bring the panel back into the conversation to talk about this. Jeff Gardere, Holly Hughes, Lou Palumbo, Brian Claypool.

Lou, I want to go to you first of all. We just heard Kyung Lah say that there were nine active crime scenes and that one scene, one small area, 20 bullets were recovered. Now clearly some of those were probably law enforcement who returned fire but what does that tell you about the gunman's ability to carry this out and his ability to reload while still in a vehicle and still while sort of making his way down that stretch of college town?

PALUMBO: Well, I will tell you, interestingly enough, he had a high level of proficiency with this firearm.

FEYERICK: Yes.

PALUMBO: Because I can tell you after having carried a weapon for 40 years and I actively shoot, I constantly train, I'm required to qualify at least once a year. This young man was pretty proficient. This wasn't luck.

The other thing is that these firearms today are so easy to reload. They're so quick in their mechanism that, you know, it doesn't surprise me he was capable of carrying out this level of violence and so efficiently. We've become more efficient in killing people, that's for certain.

FEYERICK: Right. And that's exactly what I thought myself actually because, you know, you think about this. If you purchase that gun, the question is, was he practicing firing it because I agree with you, Lou, on that. The fact that he was able to hit a certain number of people, especially in that kind of pandemonium and panic means that he had at least some knowledge of how to use that firearm.

Jeff Gardere, I want to go to you. We are seeing a little bit of motion there at the podium. So if I cut you off, just --

GARDERE: Sure. No worries.

FEYERICK: Please let me cut you off.

(LAUGHTER)

GARDERE: Sure.

FEYERICK: But the one thing that I want to ask, and that is, you know, you and I have been going through this manifesto, 140 pages. He writes this story. This is the story of his life. He wanted people to know. When you look at somebody like Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook shooting, he destroyed all evidence. He destroyed the computer disks, the hard drives, smashed it to bits. It went to Quantico. Even they couldn't piece it back together.

What is the difference between somebody does something like this that's so well written, so prepared, and somebody who wants to erase all traces that he was ever here?

GARDERE: Well, Adam Lanza never had a connection to society, to people. He had sensory deprivation disorders, he had some sort of schizophrenia that was going on, and he just could not be around people. He was awkward. You could see it in all of his physical movements.

Elliot Rodger, on the other hand, much more higher functioning, much more narcissistic and wants to tell a story.

FEYERICK: And we can -- OK. Now we are -- some people are gathering at the press conference but until they actually begin to speak, let's just keep talking.

The whole -- the personality disorder here that we've been talking about, and you know, Brian Claypool, you earlier said that, you know, this is something that you don't know whether enough was done or enough could be done. Have you dealt with the criminal defendant like this person before? And, again, I'm going to cut you off if they start talking, so just beware.

CLAYPOOL: Sure. Deborah, I've actually dealt with plenty civil rights cases in where victims have been shot by law enforcement and they have been mentally challenged and they've had mental disabilities, so I'm very sensitive to the mental aspect of this. And all I'm trying to say here is in the situation like this and the other mass shootings we've had, you've got to look at the red flags. There are red flags.

What we as a society do with these red flags is really the teachable moment in all of this. And for example, you know, Lou was talking a little bit about gun control. I think maybe a suggestion I have is, and tell me somebody out there if we don't already have it. If somebody is treated by a psychologist and there is a medication prescribed to that patient that deals with depression, anger, rage, or a mental disorder and they already own a gun, then somehow we have to have a system in place where the gun can be revoke.

FEYERICK: Yes.

CLAYPOOL: That there's a procedure in place to do that. So I think there's things we have to do here to try to take back the guns if there is a mentality disability if that makes sense.

(CROSSTALK)

FEYERICK: Which is fascinating. But then you've got to also take into consideration the fact that people are going to access to those medical records. You know, the HIPAA laws are so tight right now that, in fact, anybody who has a mental disorder, whether it comes or it doesn't -- just let's all take a look. Let's not forget what's going on there at the site.

Now it looks like -- there seems to be pictures of multiple guns. Again, it does appear that the man in the picture is Elliot Rodger and they say that is the suspect. Elliot Rodger, date of birth, 7-24- 1991. Ironically that is the date he gives in his opening line of his manifesto.

And you see some of the deputies. The deputies are the ones who have the lead in the investigation. We heard stories about the deputies who were running on foot, chasing the black BMW that this young man, this killer, this gunman was actually driving and they seem to be setting it up right now getting this organized.

It also looks -- this is good. It looks like we have somebody from the hospital and perhaps that person will give us an update on the condition of some those who were injured. And there we have the sheriff. So let me stand down and let's hear what he has to say.

SHERIFF BILL BROWN, SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the press. Thank you for coming today. We apologize for the delay in starting this press conference.

My name is Bill Brown. I am the sheriff coroner of Santa Barbara County. I am joined here today by a number of people from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, Executive and Command staff, as well as a number of our members of our allied agencies and community leaders.

I'm joined by acting Undersheriff Don Patterson, acting Chief Deputy Sam Gross who's in charge of our law enforcement operations, Commander Darryn Factoringham, acting commander Steve Robel who is the commander of our Criminal Investigations Division, Lieutenant Kelly Moore who is overseeing this criminal investigation, and Lieutenant Steve Johnson who is assisting him in that regard.

I'm also going to be joined by Dr. Stephen Kaminski, who is the director of Trauma Services for Cottage Hospital, and he will be speaking following my remarks.

I also want to acknowledge and thank the community leaders who are present here today to show their support. We have our Second District County Supervisor Janet Wolf, our Third District County Supervisor Doreen Farr, Chancellor Henry Yang from the UC campus in Santa Barbara, Dr. Laurie Gaskin who's the president of Santa Barbara City College, Carlos Canino who's the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Dr. Leslie Lundt who's with the Santa Barbara County Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services. Mark D'Arelli who is the captain and commander of the Santa Barbara office of the California Highway Patrol. Jeff Scobba who is the assistant chief for the Coastal Division of the California Highway Patrol and Lieutenant Dave Millard of the UC Santa Barbara Police Department.

This is our second press conference to present information pertaining to the tragic mass murder incident that occurred last night in Isla Vista. This was a chaotic, rapidly unfolding and convoluted incident that involved multiple crime scenes. Investigators from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office and from allied agencies have been processing evidence and investigating this occurrence throughout the evening and up until the present time.

Additional information has now been received that will clarify and in some cases correct some information that was preliminary conveyed at our first press conference.

I'd like to start by confirming the identity of the suspect in this case. His name was Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger, R-O-D-G-E-R. His date of birth was July 24th, 1991, a 22-year-old Eurasian male, a student of Santa Barbara City College who was living in Isla Vista.

Our agency had -- has had three previous documented contacts with suspect Rodger. The first of those occurred in July -- July 21st of 2013 when the suspect was contacted at the hospital where he was being treated for injuries and claimed to be the victim of an assault. A UC Police Department officer assigned to the Isla Vista Foot Patrol documented that incident but received information that the informant, Mr. Rodger, may have actually been the aggressor in that incident. That case was suspended pending any additional leads.

The second accident occurred on January 15th of 2014. When suspect Rodger contacted our agency and accused one of his roommates of stealing three candles that were valued at $22. Rodger made a citizen arrest of the roommate on a charge of 488 of the Penal Code which is petty theft. The roommate was booked into the jail, subsequently cited and released, and later the case was subsequently referred to the district attorney who filed a petty theft charge in that case.

The third incident occurred April 30th of 2014 when sheriff's deputies contacted the suspect at his residence following a request to check on his welfare. That request had originated from family member. The deputies contacted the suspect at the time, found him to be polite and courteous. He downplayed the concerns for his welfare and the deputies cleared the call. I want to now go into a chronology of the events that occurred last night. We believe we have a fairly good albeit perhaps somewhat still rough chronology of the suspect's actions last night. We have identified 10 separate locations where criminal activity took place. In several of those locations there were actually more than one specific crime scene, but I'm going go through these locations, refer to them as one through 10.

You have received a sheet that has a map of Isla Vista with the numerals on that sheet to give you an idea where the incident -- or how the incident unfolded and where what I'm about to tell you occur.

Location number one, it appears as though suspect Rodger murdered three victims within his residence in the 6500 Block of Seville Road prior to the shooting rampage that took place last night. The three male victims appear to have been repeatedly stabbed. We're still processing that crime scene and we are still in the process of positively identifying the victims and notifying their next of kin, so I will not have their identities for you at this time.

The second location was the beginning of last night's rampage, and that was at the Alpha Phi Sorority in the 800 Block of Embarcadero del Norte. Several members of this sorority reported hearing loud and aggressive knocking at the front door, which lasted for one to two minutes. Fortunately no one opened the door and shortly afterwards witnesses reported seeing three young women who were standing outside in the vicinity shot by the suspect from across the street.

The victims' names, two of those victims were fatally wounded and one thankfully is still alive. The two victims who were killed were Catherine Brianne Cooper, a 22-year-old, and Veronika Elizabeth Weiss, a 19-year-old. Both of these young ladies were UCSB students. Those were the two who were killed. And the third victim who is still alive suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

After shooting those victims, the suspect then traveled to location number three, a nearby delicatessen that's located on Pardol Road. He exited his vehicle, he entered the delicatessen, and he shot and killed 20-year-old Christopher Ross Michael-Martinez. That's a double-barreled hyphenated name. Michael-Martinez. Mr. Michael- Martinez was also a USCB student.

Isla Vista Foot Patrol deputies heard the shooting and responded to investigate the incident. As they arrived at the scene, they witnessed the suspect who at that time was unknown fleeing eastbound in his suspect vehicle, a black BMW. The suspect continued toward location number four at the top of the loop where he fired multiple rounds at two people who were on the sidewalk.

Now the suspect drove his vehicle on the wrong side of the road and it was parallel to the sidewalk when he shot from the driver's window. The suspect continued forward and he turned southbound until El Embarcadero then turned eastbound on to Del Playa to location number five where he brandished a handgun at a female victim.

The suspect fired additional rounds, turned his vehicle around, and started to travel westbound on Del Playa. A lone sheriff's deputy responding to the area on foot was then taken under fire by the suspect. The sheriff's deputy returned fire and the suspect drove off westbound on Del Playa. He traveled to location number six in the 6600 Block of Del Playa where he struck and injured a bicyclist with his vehicle.

The suspect then continued west to Camino del Sur and he turned northbound onto that road. He proceed to the intersection of Sabado Tarde, which is location number seven, Camino del Sur and Sabado Tarde Road where he fired multiple shots at pedestrians in the area. Three of those pedestrians were struck by the suspect's gunfire. The suspect then traveled east bound on Sadado Tarde where he shot another victim at location number eight, the intersection of Camino Pescadero and Sabado Tarde.

The suspect continue driving eastbound to location number nine where he came into contact with four sheriff's deputies who were running across Acorn Park in response to the gunfire. As the suspect accelerated past the deputies, he fired at them. Three of the four sheriff's deputies were able to return fire at the suspect, striking the suspect's vehicle and we believe shooting the suspect in his left hip area.

The suspect drove off and again turned south on El Embarcadero proceeded to Del Playa when he turned westbound again on Del Playa Street he had been on previously. Witnesses reported the suspect accelerating his vehicle to a high rate of speed and striking yet another bicyclist. This victim was thrown on to the hood of the suspect's vehicle and caved in the windshield of that vehicle.

The suspect's vehicle then collided with several parked cars and came to a spot. The deputies immediately removed the suspect from the car and handcuffed him. He was obviously dead with an apparent gunshot wound to the head.

So in summary, there were a total of 10 different locations with 12 actual crime scenes between those locations. Between those locations there were a total of seven fatalities, six innocent victims, and one suspect. An additional 13 people were injured during this melee. Four of them were apparently injured by the suspect's vehicle when he struck them. Eight of those individuals sustained gunshot wounds. And one sustained a minor injury of unknown origin.

Three 9 millimeter semiautomatic handguns were recovered from the suspect's vehicle. Two of these were SIG-Sauer P226 model handguns and the remaining one was a Glock .34 long slide. And we have images of those types of firearms there as well as a photo of one of the suspect's weapons for you on the screen.

With the assistance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, we have determined that all of these weapons were legally purchased from federally licensed firearms dealers and that they were all registered to the suspect. One weapon was purchased in Galida, one in Oxnard, and one in Burbank. In addition to the weapons, the suspect had 34 loaded 10-round magazines for the SIG-Sauer pistols and seven 10-round magazines for the Glock pistol. This investigation is continuing and we expect more information will be released within the next day or two. At this time I would like to turn the podium over to Dr. Kaminski for some comment regarding the injured victims.

DR. STEPHEN KAMINSKI, TRAUMA SERVICES DIRECTOR, COTTAGE HOSPITAL: Thank you, Sheriff Brown. I'll be very brief.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Spell your name, please.

KAMINSKI: My last name is Kaminski, K-A-M-I-N-S-K-I. I am the trauma director for Cottage Health System in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N. I'm the trauma director for Cottage Health System and Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

On behalf of Cottage Health System I extend my condolences to the families and friends of those who are affected by this tragedy. Our thoughts are with you.

We are deeply saddened by the events that occurred in our community. We're doing everything we can to provide the best care to the victims who arrived at our hospitals. And our social workers and spiritual care team are providing support for the patients and their families. I can provide you with the following information on this incident.

Four patients were treated and released at Galida Valley Cottage Hospital last night and early into the morning -- early into the morning today. Seven injured victims were transported to our trauma center at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital where they remain in our care. Of those seven, two patients are in good condition, three patients are in fair condition, and two patients are in serious condition.

Thank you for your cooperation in allowing the privacy and space needed for these patients and families to heal. Out of respect for their confidentiality and compliance with confidentiality law, I will not be able to provide any further information on individual victims or their injuries.

Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you, Dr. Kaminski.

And again, I want to thank members of the press for being here. In summary, I would just like to express on behalf of all of the men and women of the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office and our allied agencies and our community and community leaders who are here today, our deepest condolences to the victims who were killed in this tragic incident and our best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery from all of the injured victims as well.

And I also want to re-emphasize something that I said yesterday, and that is to commend the actions that have been taken in response to this case by the membership and women in law enforcement, particularly in my department. I particularly am exceedingly proud of the response that was delivered in the field, the resolute and heroic manner in which my deputies engaged this homicidal suspect in two separate gun battles, and I have no doubt that had they not done that and had they not engaged that kind of activity, that there would have been further loss of life and further injury, especially when we've determined that the suspect had over 400 remaining rounds of ammunition in his possession.

So my kudos to all of the people that are involved, in particular, those who were actually out there dealing with the incident as it unfolded.

We can take a few questions at this point. I will lead with the caveat that some of the information I may not be able to provide to you at this point in time. We will continue to keep you updated as well. Tracy?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: The question was, when did we become aware of videos that were on the -- one the Web and the manifesto or the written document that apparently was written by the suspect.

We became aware of that fairly quickly in the investigation, last night, and in reading this 141-page rambling autobiographical, almost a combination of an autobiography and a diary it's very apparent of the severe extent of how disturbed Mr. Rodger was and the fact that he had been and was continuing to be seen by a variety of different health care professionals. But it's very, very apparent that he was severely mentally disturbed when you review that document.

And the videotape is a chilling -- there were several videotapes that he had posted, but the one that was posted just prior to the attack is a particularly chilling one in which he basically looks at the camera and talks about what he is about to do.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

BROWN: What I can tell you is that when the deputies contacted him, he -- you know, this was in response to a check on the welfare call, to check on his welfare, to see how he was doing out of concern for him. The deputies contacted him directly at his residence and they determined that he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary mental health hold. He was, as I said, courteous and polite. He appeared timid and shy.

He did not meet the criteria for 5150 of the Welfare Institution's Code, which is what would authorize him being held temporarily for an examination. He expressed to the deputies that he was having difficulties with his social life and that he probably would not be returning to school in the next year. The deputies discussed options with him in terms of support, offered resources to him and ultimately cleared that call without further action.