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Oregon Shooting; Gun Activism. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 2, 2015 - 14:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:24] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN.

And minutes from now we will be hearing from the governor of the state of Oregon. She will be speaking on one of the worst massacres in her state's history.

And a string of new details are being revealed right now. Nine people were killed, another nine victims wounded. The lone shooter is dead and we're just getting word of some of the writings that have been found. More on that in a second.

Also moments ago, we learned authorities have now recovered more than a dozen weapons.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CELINEZ NUNEZ, ATF ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: So far we've recovered 13 weapons. Out of those 13 weapons we currently have in custody, six were recovered at the school, seven were recovered at the shooter's residence. All 14 have been traced to a federal firearms dealer. They are all at different stages currently in the tracing process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We have full coverage for you at this hour right now with "Legal View" anchor Ashleigh Banfield, who is live at the Umpqua Community College, CNN's Ana Cabrera is at the public safety center there in Roseburg, and I have CNN's Deborah Feyerick who's with me as well. And so we will get to the victims, we will get to the survivors, of course, and these stories of heroism in just a moment.

But, Deb, let me just turn to you and ask you, we are now learning a little bit as far as what happened yesterday in this shooter keeping one of these could be victims alive, basically saying, you need to deliver this box.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's exactly right. And one of the victims, a young girl, was speaking to her father before she entered surgery and she told him a number of things, including that he was the one who said that he was targeting - he asked whether the people in the room were Christians. But another thing the victim also said, she said that he gave someone a small box and said, you've got to deliver this.

Now, we are also learning, subsequent to that, is that there are some sort of documents that investigators are now pouring over and they are his ramblings, his rantings. He's clearly angry. He's isolated. He can't get a girlfriend. He's frustrated. And he just can't sustain relationships.

We've also learned, Brooke, that, in fact, back in 2008, he was in the military for a month and wasn't able to get through basic training. So the military basically sent him home for issues that they're not telling us about.

So he began to develop what appears to be some sort of an obsession with these massacres. One of the websites he was on, he downloaded a documentary and the documentary was about the -

BALDWIN: Sandy Hook.

FEYERICK: Surviving Sandy Hook. And so he also blogs on that very same sort of file sharing website about the two reporters who were killed in Virginia, basically saying that that gunman, he was alone, he was unknown and then all of a sudden he carries out this horrible act and everybody knows his name. So he's 26 years old. We know that. And right now everybody is trying to peel back to find out where specifically and what pushed him over the edge.

BALDWIN: Notoriety and inspiration from some of these previous shootings. It's a - it's a pattern.

FEYERICK: Yes.

BALDWIN: Deb, thank you. Standby.

Let me go to Ana Cabrera, who's there in Roseburg.

And, Ana, you were there at that sheriff's news conference. That was when we learned how many weapons were recovered. Tell me more.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Even more than we had imagined initially. In fact, six of those 13 weapons, we're told, were recovered on campus at the shooting scene. Seven other weapons, firearms, were recovered at the shooter's residence we are told. All of them, we learned, purchased legally in the last three years, either by the shooter or by family members. Again, this is a man who is 26 years old, of legal age to buy firearms.

Now his family apparently telling our sources that he, in fact, did suffer mental illness and had sought treatment for mental illness. So still a lot of questions about what role that may have played in the shooting.

The other thing we learned was recovered from the scene. Alongside a rifle, according to the ATF official who spoke, was a flak jacket. That flak jacket had steel plates, she said, and five magazines. This guy came loaded with a lot of ammunition that could have been involved in a prolonged gunfight if it hadn't been for a couple of police officers who responded within minutes and initially engaged the shooter in a shootout, ultimately ending with the shooter dead.

I talked with the president of this community college, the Umpqua Community College, just a few minutes ago and she told me that they do not believe that this 26-year-old man was a current student at the community college. She also said that they're looking into whether he had been a student there in the past, but there's still no indication as to why he targeted their college or these specific classes. Where he initially opened fire, she said, was an English class.

[14:05:02] So as we work to get more information and put the clues together, we're also seeing, I think important to mention, that we're seeing a tremendous outpouring of unity in this community and an outpouring of love and the president spoke to that as well.

BALDWIN: It seems to have touched so many people in the community.

Ashleigh Banfield, you've been hearing that over and over and over. Tell me more about the victims and the survivors.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, ANCHOR, CNN'S "LEGAL VIEW": Well, it happened just, you know, 0.8 of a mile from where I'm standing. And, Brooke, you can probably see behind me, it is still roped off with crime tape this far out. This is still a crime scene, even a mile away from this community college. And what happened in those beautiful, bucolic hills behind me is nothing short of a horror story.

And we get some of these accounts from those people who survived. One of them, Anastasia Boylan, told her dad and her brother some of the details of what happened in one of those classrooms where so many were executed literally feet from her. She, herself, took a bullet to the back and was down on the ground. She was being ordered to stand up by this killer, but she played dead, and because of that she was able to hear and see what went on around her.

He systemically asked people to stand and then asked them what their religions were. And those who said they were Christian were executed point-blank, some in the head. We are unclear at this point of the details of those who answered otherwise. And there could have been other details with regard to other religious animosities that we don't know about yet. So let's make sure we're really clear about that.

But there is this one other detail that Anastasia told her father and her brother. And that was, all of their belongings, as you can imagine in the melee, were scattered everywhere. These students, the dead and the living. Anastasia was no different. Her cell phone rang and she was able to actually speak with her brother. This as she lay on the ground with a bullet in her back and she said to her brother, I'm alive but I can't feel my legs.

She was also the person who was able to recount to her own father, just before she went in for surgery to remove that bullet from her back, that she overheard and may have actually been able to see this killer actually hand off this box to one of the survivors, commanding that survivor, you're going to need to deliver this to someone. So that may be the connection between the manifesto of papers and ramblings. Perhaps they were inside that box that Anastasia was able to actually witness the transference of.

But it's just been like an incredible series of details that have come from inside one of those classrooms, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Ashleigh, thank you so much. Ana Cabrera, thank you.

As we talk about those who did survive, of course, multiple hospitals receiving a number of patients. We are just getting a statement in from one of the medical centers, the Peace Health Sacred Heart Medical Center. Here's the update.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I want to give you an update on the patients' status. We took in three patients yesterday from Roseburg Mercy Medical Center. They are all three stable at this time. We've downgraded one to a lower level of care from critical. She is going to be transferred out of the ICU today and to the ward for the remainder of her hospitalization.

The other two remain intubated, sedated. One has a significant head injury, but clinically she is doing well. I think from a standpoint she's going to recover from this injury. She has many orthopedic injuries that need to be addressed yet and will probably return to the operating room one or two more times to have those addressed.

The final patient is in the O.R. this morning undergoing orthopedic repair of some broken bones, secondary to the gunshot wounds. She had a laparotomy done yesterday to look at the injuries in her abdomen and is doing well from that standpoint.

Any questions at this time?

QUESTION: Are you releasing the names of these patients?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will not be releasing the names of these patients. We're going to leave that up I think either to the local police department or - down in Roseburg.

QUESTION: What is it specifically that you offered up here? We were talking to the folks and the hospital - at Mercy down there this morning and they said they had to come up here because they needed neurosurgery that -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) expertise that they couldn't offer down there. Is it safe to assume or is it a fact that all three had head injuries? They were all - had gunshot wounds to the head?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, we had one with a gunshot wound to the head, one with a gunshot wound to the spine.

[14:10:05] I mean, I think, first of all, we need to talk about Mercy. They did a fantastic job yesterday in providing the initial care to these patients, triaging them. I don't know what they took care of down there personally. I haven't had a chance to talk with them. But the way they packaged the patients up and prepared them for transport and got them to us in a timely manner was fantastic. All the patients were hemodynamically stable and had appropriate interventions prior to being transferred to us.

The most critical one was the one with the head injury. We knew they were coming. We actually activated our mass casualty protocols here at Sacred Heart Riverbend. With the number of potential injuries that we were expecting, I think I received the first phone call yesterday morning about 10:30. I was actually in the O.R. at that time operating on another patient, received a phone call from the trauma surgeon down at Mercy who let me know the status and what to expect.

At that point we activated our trauma - our mass casualty protocols. We actually had 63 personnel in the E.R. by 11:00. We needed 60. We activated four bays, four trauma teams, which consisted of an E.R. physician, a trauma surgeon, anesthesiologist, two nurses, a phlebotomist, a scribe, two med techs, a chaplain. And so it was a great response from the community. We had E.R. physicians, anesthesiologists, surgeons who were not even on call, call in or text in or even come in to see what we needed. We had two neurosurgeons which we contacted personally letting them know that we needed their assistance. We had to vascular surgeons come down to help out in case there were vascular injuries. And, of course, orthopedics and then we had of - we had I think eight trauma surgeons, general surgeons, involved in the care yesterday.

QUESTION: How many hours do you think you've spent in the operating room with these victims?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Litman (ph) took care of the one who was - received the gunshot wound to the chest and abdomen and he can speak directly to how long he spent in that and I'll just let him talk to that.

Dr. LITMAN: So, in general, from the time that they - all of the patients arrived, till the time that they got to the operating room is variable based on their injuries. For the two that were the most critical, they were out of the E.R. and into the operating room in 30 minutes or less. Just depending on their injuries.

You know, the surgery that I was in took about four hours. The operating room was being utilized by one of the three patients for probably six or seven hours total. But that was, again, spread out based on who needed to be in the O.R. at what point and how many surgeons ended up needing to be involved.

You know, in our operating room, we had three anesthesiologists helping get her ready for surgery. A cardiothoracic surgeon evaluating the chest injury. At the end of the case, the orthopedic surgeon came in and evaluated the extremity injuries that needed to be evaluated. And so, I mean, it was a tremendous team effort as far as getting everything that we could get done, done at the same time. And, you know, making sure, of course, that she was still doing well under anesthesia and ready to continue doing well.

QUESTION: Were any of the patients alert and talking when they arrived? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. The young woman that suffered the gunshot wound to the back was alert, oriented and talking.

QUESTION: Was she giving any kind of information about where she felt pain, where she was shot, anything that helped you with her case?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, her physical exam, she cooperated with that, was able to participate and help us diagnose the extent of her injuries. It was a little more relaxed with her care because the injuries were not life threatening. Of course, life, limb and eyesight is how we triage patients with respect to who gets intervention first. Hers were not life-threatening. The bullet wound was low enough that she didn't have a lot of neurologic deficit. So we were able to take our time, get a computerized tomography scan of her back, assess where the bullet was, had neurosurgery come down, evaluate her, had a discussion about the benefit/risk of an MRI given the fact that the bullets today are all metal, we can't use an MRI any longer to assess that. He did a neurologic exam, made the determination -

[14:15:08] BALDWIN: You've been listening to a number of doctors here at one of the medical centers that's been taking in and treating a number of these victims from this mass shooting from yesterday at the Umpqua Community College. And so we are always wanting to get updates here on those who are being treated, going into detail really now as far as how severe some of these injuries are and really the state of these individuals as they were being rushed into the hospital right around this time yesterday.

As we stay on this breaking story, just want to give you a heads up. We are waiting for the governor of Oregon and she will be addressing the shootings here any moment now. We'll take that live.

Also ahead, just one month ago I sat in a room in Washington, D.C., with 40 men, women, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, all touched by gun violence. It was - it was incredibly painful and helpful as they are asking Congress for change. More on that and my conversation with Rich Martinez, his son was killed in a shooting as well. Don't miss that conversation. Our special coverage continues right after this.

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[14:20:19] BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We are looking at live pictures here. We are anticipating a news conference from the Oregon governor, Kate Brown, here momentarily on what happened right around this time yesterday. That massacre compelled President Obama to address the nation, members of the media, his 15th time doing so after a mass shooting. And more so than ever before, he has made it clear, again, he's sick of making these statements.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this. We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: While many of the scenes of these mass shootings are becoming far too familiar, it obviously does not lessen the shock for those there in Roseburg, Oregon. Survivors say they never thought something like this could possibly happen in this town of 22,000 people. Shelby Wambolt is one of those who was locked in the cafeteria as all of this unfolded. She joins me now live there from the campus.

Shelby, thank you so much for joining me. I am so sorry for the loss of fellow students and those at your college. How are you holding up today?

SHELBY WAMBOLT, STUDENT, UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE: It's been a difficult day. We've hardly got - no one's gotten any sleep. I know you probably heard that from a lot of people. We're just - we all kind of hanging in there at this point in time and just flabbergasted that this happened in our community. And it's just unbelievable. I - I - this was not what I was expecting my fifth day of college to be, honestly.

BALDWIN: Of course not, and it shouldn't have -

WAMBOLT: But it -

BALDWIN: It shouldn't be. It shouldn't have happened.

WAMBOLT: No. No. It should not have happened one bit.

BALDWIN: Can you just - can you take me back to being - can you take me back to being in the cafeteria and you were along this, what, a glass wall when - did you hear the shots? What did you see?

WAMBOLT: We were - we did not hear any shots where we were at. I was in - I was going to lunch between two courses and we were just sitting in there and a gentleman opened the door and said, I do not want any of you leaving or going anywhere. And then someone said some - you need to line up on the wall. And we lined up on the one wall and then on the opposite side of us was a full glass wall where the doors where everyone can come into the campus center and come into the cafeteria. So it was very scary being in open glass like that and not a sealed room.

BALDWIN: But so you're saying some -

WAMBOLT: And not knowing really what was going on.

BALDWIN: I can't imagine. I cannot imagine. And so you're told to stand along this wall. I mean we're hearing stories of students locking doors and turning off lights and some playing dead to survive.

WAMBOLT: Yes. BALDWIN: Did you know what to do in the case of a school shooting? Were protocols in place?

WAMBOLT: There were no protocols in place. This was my first year out at UCC. And there - I mean, I'm just used to hearing kind of like some other gentlemen said, you know, we practiced this in high school and elementary school and even junior high but not in a college atmosphere. We had no protocol really what to do in a case like this. And things just moved so quickly.

BALDWIN: You - yes. I know that once it happened so quickly and then law enforcement got everyone out bus by bus by bus to the fairgrounds, I understand you were waiting for a friend at the fairgrounds. Is your friend OK?

WAMBOLT: My friend is not OK. He is not with us any longer.

BALDWIN: (INAUDIBLE).

WAMBOLT: We waited and waited and we waited and they told us that there was more buses coming and they went in and took me into be debriefed and interviewed by the detectives to know what my car was and all of that information. And I went back in the room and an officer, I believe he was a fire marshal, kind of choked up and he said, I don't know if I can do this and he spoke up and he said, there is no more buses coming. No one else is coming. And if you have a loved one that's missing, you need to go over to the flags and get a picture and a name and let them know so we can kind of let people know. But it was upwards to 12 hours before some of the people we knew found out their members were gone.

BALDWIN: Unreal. Shelby Wambolt, thank you so much for joining me. And, again, I am so, so sorry.

WAMBOLT: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: When these shots rang out at this community college, we almost immediately learned that nine people were killed, many others were injured. And my mind instantly went to a very special group of people, members of a so-called club nobody wants to join. These are mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who all have lost people they love to gun violence. And I sat down in this room in Washington, D.C., just last month with 40 people all in their latest attempts to bring about change on Capitol Hill, sensible gun control, this is what they want. Here is just a piece of my town hall with the loneliest club.

[14:25:18]

CLAI LASHER-SOMMERS, SHOT BY ABUSIVE STEPFATHER AT AGE 13: Nobody is safe from this. I don't care who you are or where you stand, nobody is safe from this. And until we stand up and ask and demand that people start acting with some sort of morality and change some legislation, what is going on. After Newtown, I stood in front of the television camera saying to myself, oh, my God, something's going to happen. I cried for three weeks straight because I knew as a child what those children had been through. I knew. And I thought something's going to happen now. We're not going to have all these children mass murdered and we're not going to do something as a nation.

COLIN GODDARD, SURVIVED VIRGINIA TECH MASS SHOOTING: People think that however that this conversation we're having is really about taking guns from everybody.

BALDWIN: It's not.

GODDARD: Or the other reality is that -

BALDWIN: That's a huge - I'm glad - misconceptions.

GODDARD: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: People think you all think people shouldn't have guns.

GODDARD: Yes.

BALDWIN: That is not the case.

GODDARD: It's finding those common grounds to bring people together is how we're going to get things done. But the NRA cannot defeat us on background checks straight up. They have to associate with an extreme end point in order to muddy the waters and make people confused. Because when they do have a genuine background check conversation, the average American thinks this just makes sense, this ought to be done everywhere.

ANNE HAYNES, HUSBAND RONALD MURDERED AT HIS HOME IN VIRGINIA: And my husband, Ron Kirby, was killed by a man who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He sent his girlfriend to buy the gun and killed my husband. And that right away you have to ask, how can a mentally ill person who is a felon on top of that get away with sending his girlfriend to buy the gun and they still haven't found the guns. And his death has just been devastating for me. He was the love of my life.

RICHARD MARTINEZ, SON CHRISTOPHER KILLED IN ISLA VISTA SHOOTING: Our kids and our families deserve better in this country. The rest of the world looks at us and they don't understand how we can live like this. We're the most technologically advanced country in the world and we have not come to grips with this problem. We need to do whatever it takes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was Richard Martinez. His son Christopher Martinez was killed last year during a shooting rampage at the campus of UC Santa Barbara. Richard has now made it his life's mission and work to reform gun laws in America and he joins me live.

And, Rich, I mean sitting in that room with you, we all said that there will be a next time. And we've had the next time here in Oregon. When you heard the news, as a father who's lost a child, where does your mind immediately go? RICHARD MARTINEZ, SON CHRISTOPHER KILLED IN ISLA VISTA SHOOTING: Well,

you remember what it was like. I mean you remember what it's like to get that phone call. And I just, you know, another interviewer asked me if I was surprised. Well, I'm not surprised that this happened. It can happen tomorrow. We haven't done enough in this country to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. And one of the things that we can do to do that is universal background checks on all gun sales. That's something that's supported by the vast majority of people in this country. And because of the lack of leadership in Congress, it hasn't happened.

It's happened at the state levels. Just this past year, Oregon became the 18th state to adopt background checks. Background checks will not prevent all gun violence. But in the states that have background checks, there's far less gun violence. So we know that they do work.

We need to insist that the political leaders of this country adopt common sense measures to reduce gun violence. It wasn't like this when I was growing up in the '50s and '60s. It's not like this in other developed countries. Other developed countries in the world have the same per capita number of people of mentally ill as we do and they keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

BALDWIN: Rich -

MARTINEZ: And as a result, they have far less gun violence.

BALDWIN: When you heard - when I was listening to that news conference a bit ago and I heard that a member of law enforcement in Oregon saying it was 13 or 14 guns recovered here, all bought legally. And when you have - you know you're going to have folks saying, listen, what would background checks do to prevent something like this from happening? He had all these guns legally.

MARTINEZ: Well, as I said, Brooke, background checks won't prevent all gun violence. But one of the things that every town for gun safety and Moms Demand Action been working on is red flag legislation. And that's passed in California. And what that does is allows immediate family members or law enforcement to go in front of a judge