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Gunman Opens Fire in Lafayette, Louisiana, Move Theater; Interview with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal; Police Chief: Gunman Identified as John Russell Houser. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 24, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00] ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: -- injuries, and three dead, including the 58-year-old male shooter who turned the gun on himself.

CHIEF JIM CRAFT, LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA POLICE DEPARTMENT: We do know the identity of the shooter. We are not releasing it at this time. We are right in the middle of the investigation and we don't want to affect the investigators' ability to do their job.

LAVANDERA: Just 20 minutes into a showing of Amy Schumer's comedy "Train Wreck" at the Grand 16 Theater, the scene turned into something from a horror movie. Bullets flying as the gunman described by authorities as a lone white male stood up and began shooting a handgun into the audience.

TANYA CLARK, WITNESS: We saw a lady with blood all over her leg. I just grabbed my towel and we all ran.

LAVANDERA: Police dispatched to the scene at about 7:30 central time. Witnessed described the terrifying ordeal as something like a war, gunshot after gunshot as patrons fled the theater for safety.

PAT FREDERICK, APARTMENT MANAGER ACROSS FROM THEATER: Heard all the sirens and people coming out and chaos, basically.

LAVANDERA: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal praising the heroism of two teachers who were members in the audience.

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, (R) LOUISIANA: Both of them were shot. One of them was release tonight. Her friend literally jumped over her and in her account actually saved her life. If she hadn't done that, her friend got shot, that bullet would have hit her in the head. The second one, the one whose life was saved, even though she was shot in the leg, she had the presence of mind to pull the fire alarm to help save other lives.

LAVANDERA: And actress Amy Schumer who stars in the film took to Twitter to express sympathy. "My heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA: And as we know investigators are fanning out across the city. They know the identity of the gunman, this 58-year-old white male. Obviously, they have been working throughout the night to piece together the motive here. In just a short while, state police, local police, and the governor of Louisiana will be holding another briefing to update the situation here. We'll bring that to you as well. Michaela and Chris, back to you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, just give me a heads up when that presser is getting started so we can come back to you and get in position. We are also waiting on the governor. He obviously is trying to make his way to the presser. He wants to talk to us before he gets there so we can get you the latest information.

But obviously we're examining Lafayette, Louisiana, on its own and what drove this man to do something so terrible, but also as a little bit of a window into a recent pattern. So let's get to Alexandra Field for what we know about this gunman, but also how this fits into what we have been seeing too much of. Alexandra?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And, Chris, what we do know about the gunman is that in so many ways he does fit this profile. And we can say profile because there are so many cases to take a look at, sadly.

Let's start here. This is a shooter who was 58-years-old. This is a 58-year-old, a white male. That's what we're told. We're told that he has some kind of criminal history but no specifics yet on what that criminal history entails.

As for a motive, well, we know that police cannot interview the shooter. So instead they will be talking to friends and family members, trying to get some understanding of what could motivate something as horrific as this.

If you look at the data, and again there is data because we see so many of these mass shootings in this country, you'll see the other ways this shooter falls in line. Take a look. This is data compiled by "Mother Jones," analyzed by CNN. What it clearly shows you is that overwhelmingly the shooters in these cases are white people, white men specifically followed by blacks, Asians, and Latinos. Asian shooters disproportionately high compared to the population. For Latinos, disproportionately low compared to the population.

Moving on, we can add another man to the list of mass shooters. These are faces of all men, overwhelmingly we're talking about male shooters in these cases. People this morning waking up and asking why would somebody go into a movie theater where people are watching a film and open fire?

Of course this smacks of what happened just three years ago in Colorado, so people will wonder is this somebody who was in some sick way inspired by that shooting? It's a question that investigators will be asking. We know we are coming up on the three-year anniversary of that shooting. And this is a case that's been in the news. Sadly, that's a face that's been in the news. This is somebody who was convicted by a jury just a week ago. It isn't the face we want to look at this morning. We want to be talking about the people inside that theater. We hope to learn more about them later this morning. Chris, Michaela?

CUOMO: There are a lot of people still fighting injuries right now, and this man does size up as things we've seen in the past. However, also different. Older, 58 years of age. What was the motive? We know that he had a criminal background. How did that play in?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: From awhile back.

CUOMO: Did that figure into the access of the weapon? Louisiana's laws specifically lenient in this area. It's really just about having a license.

PEREIRA: All of these things will be factors that investigators will be looking into, so we thought we'd bring in a former NYPD detective, Sergeant Joe Giacalone, who is a familiar face here on NEW DAY, to talk about this work that investigators and specifically detectives will have. Give us an idea of what is going to be key for them right now. These are early hours following this shooting.

JOSEPH GIACALONE, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE SERGEANT: Sure. You can see they delayed even identifying who the shooter was, and that is so they could probably execute a search warrant on his house or place of business.

[08:05:05] PEREIRA: He could have set a booby trap there, too.

GIACALONE: Sure, absolutely. We have seen that before, too, where they set up hand grenades and all these other homemade bombs, so that's something law enforcement has to be careful of.

And as investigators they're also going to be looking at maybe social media. Many manifestos put online like we saw with Dylann Roof or something like that which might be leading into the insight or the motive behind it.

The means, opportunity, and motive are the three things investigators are going to put together. The motive is going to be the big question mark here. Is there any mental illness? Investigators have going to struggle with that, because we have to get information from the family, complete victimology on this guy, find out what made him tick.

CUOMO: And you do have it still as an active crime scene, also, not just within the theater, for obvious reasons, but we know that the car became an item of interest, the trunk, the package. We're hearing from Governor Jindal that there is activity at a motel that they think he may have been staying at. These are relevant, too, because you want to make sure you understand what the end point of this caper was.

GIACALONE: Absolutely. And what we have seen from other similar situations is that they had booby-trapped these things. And there's also a treasure-trove of information into what this guy are thinking.

PEREIRA: And I guess you don't want to get too comparative. I mean, we look at these other situations we have seen in this nation with these mass shootings. It's horrifying for us. The work of investigators to put that emotion aside and look at this individual case.

Yet there are parallels. You can't get away from it. It's another male, another white Caucasian man. But, again, as Chris was saying, a 58-year-old. Does that point to this being perhaps something other that what it might seem at first blush?

GIACALONE: Sure. This is definitely an out-liar. Having a 58- year-old, you've seen 20-year-olds in this area and whatever type of terrorism that you're dealing with, you can't rule that out off the table either.

CUOMO: What happened in that theater is also very different than what happened in Aurora. One of the points of curiosity is why did he stop shooting? There's an account that the police came in as it was contemporaneous at the same time as he took his own life. You then have that suicide aspect. Why did he do that? The governor also suggested that this may have tried to make a break for the exit as people were running out. But the big point of curiosity is going to be why did he stop shooting when he did. Often, Joe, the point is usually they're trying to hurt as many people as they possibly can. Why didn't that happen here? Thank God it didn't, but why?

GIACALONE: It could be the massive police response. They got there very quickly, and he was faced with the fact of either going to jail or taking his life. And we've seen many times where these people do kill themselves. It sends another message too because it doesn't provide closure for anybody.

PEREIRA: What was interesting too is that it wasn't a situation that was drawn out. This happened very rapidly. When we talked to the eyewitnesses that we were talking to, they were watching the previews one second, he stands up and starts firing. And it happened sort of in quick succession. By the time the police came, he apparently turned the gun on himself. To see this happen so quickly, it makes it terrifying, but it also makes the work more intense in a way, if you will, because there's less interactions with people. It makes the work for law enforcement just that much more difficult.

GIACALONE: When you have no comments that people make, we have seen this before with Dylann Roof. We know he made comments before he started shooting. We don't have any of that. So this is something that is very important for investigators to dig into his background to find out what's going on.

CUOMO: People get frustrated with us sometimes and they'll say what do I care why he did it? People don't understand, Joe, so help us understand how why things happens matter to investigations because it winds up changing the portfolio of what factors you put into stopping things the next time. If this guy was a manifesto guy --

PEREIRA: If we don't know why, we can't stop it.

CUOMO: And that's why they want to know why because it's going to affect how you stop it the next time. Somebody who can help give us some information is Governor Bobby

Jindal. He traveled to the theater within hours. He was there giving moral support as well as information. He's joining us live from Lafayette. Governor, thank you. We know that you have a lot of pressing concerns this morning and that your head and your heart are with the people from your state there in Lafayette.

You have said a couple things this morning that expand our understanding, that there is still an active investigation of a motel where this man may have been set up, and there is a suggestion that he may have tried to make a run for it during the actual event and what stopped him. What can you tell us?

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, (R) LOUISIANA: Absolutely. So it appears that he actually, his intent was to try to sneak out with the crowd. Two things stopped him. First local police were on the scene almost instantaneously. They happened to be nearby when the calls came in. They could still hear the gunshots as they ran towards the theater. He was trying to sneak out with the crowd. His car had been positioned by the exit. He saw the law enforcement, went back into to the theater. That is when he shot and killed himself. Law enforcement has processed the car, the hotel room.

[08:10:00] I will say secondly, I want to commend, there were amazing acts of heroism inside that theater. And we're going to learn more of these as we continue to talk to the witnesses and those that have been injured as well as others in the theater.

There were two teachers there on just a summer break. Last days of summer, going to see a comedy, get ready for school. One teacher jumped in front of her friend, potentially saving her life. The second teacher said the bullet was coming for her head if her friend hadn't jumped on top of her. Both teachers were injured. The second teacher was injured in the leg. She had the presence of mind despite her injury to pull the fire alarm. So who knows how many lives she saved by doing that. She was released from the hospital, the second teacher was released from the hospital last night.

Just an awful, awful scene. You had families rushing back from summer vacations, frantically searching last night, going to the hospitals to figure out whether it was their loved one that had been injured or even potentially fatally shot. An awful, awful night. It brings out the best in some people.

But, look, it also makes us very angry. This is a time to grieve, but it also makes us angry when, these senseless acts of violence happen. This is so much evil in our world. This is a time to love these families, a time to pray for these families. It's a time to keep them in your thoughts. We have been getting messages of support from all over the country. I know Lafayette will get through this. They'll be tears. We're going to have to explain to our kids why bad things happen to good people, but we'll get through this.

CUOMO: Lafayette, not New Orleans, not Baton Rouge in terms of what it's used to being exposed to a big city. This is 120,000 people. I spent time there. You know it intimately well. These are people who do take care of each other, and you saw it in action last night whether they were calling 9/11 just steps out of the theater themselves which helped the response time, or literally, as you're saying, taking a bullet for a friend.

JINDAL: Absolutely. And I looked at the emergency room last night. I saw friends of a couple of shooting victims that quickly came to the hospital. They heard the rumors one of their friends had been shot. And they weren't leaving until they got information even though it turned out in this particular case it wasn't a life- threatening injury. They refused to leave until they could see their friend or at least a doctor or a nurse could tell them everything was OK. They were going to sit there for hours.

Lafayette is a great community of faith and family. We are an hour west of Baton Rouge on Interstate 10. We're at a theater that is just simply blocks away from the University of Louisiana Lafayette. So a very normal community in a very normal part of town. This could be Anywhere, USA.

And that's what is so shocking to folks. You never want this to happen anywhere, but here in Lafayette, here in Louisiana, when you hear about these horrific incidents, you never imagine it will happen in your community, in your backyard. This shows it can happen anywhere, literally anywhere. You never want it to happen. When one family is hurting, we're all hurting. And I think these kinds of events pull us together.

A lot of folks obviously understandably very angry at what would possess this person, what would cause this person to do this.

The police have talked to the gunman's relatives. And again, there's never a good explanation for why these things happen, these senseless acts of violence. I think in this particularly case the explanation will be even less satisfying than in other cases base on what they've learned by talking to family members and processing that hotel room and car. There's never any good explanation, but, again, it's not like -- again, I just think this is going to be a very frustrating and seeming random act of violence.

CUOMO: We're going to wait on the presser, obviously, to find out what authorities want to tell us and what they may have shared with you. But ruling things out, no terror connection, no manifesto known at this point. Is there a change that this was a specific beef, that this man went in looking for somebody?

JINDAL: It does not appear that it was specific. Again, I don't want to do anything that would impede the law investigation. We will be sharing more, as you said, in just several minutes. It does not look like he went there to target somebody specifically.

But, again, they are still in the process of processing additional evidence. And they will have a little bit more to say. It doesn't bring loved ones back, but you're right. Your viewers, we're all searching and thinking you'd like to think there was some explanation because if it was predictable, and I heard you say this before, if it's predictable there was something you could do to protect yourself.

Unfortunately, tragically -- I've got three young kids and they go to summer movies all the time during the summer break. You're not going to stop doing that. They can't stop living their lives. But if it were in some way more predictable, more explainable, maybe it could help us try to take steps to protect our loved ones.

Unfortunately, it does look like again that there's not going to be a satisfying -- not that there's ever a satisfying, but it doesn't appear that there's going to be much of an explanation. As they have gone through his documents and talked to family members, and they'll have more to share, but unfortunately it does not look like there will be anything near a satisfying explanation.

CUOMO: Governor, as the leader of that state and as a man who wants to lead the country, the question becomes what do you do to make it less likely to happen again? What directions does that question point you in? Do you see this as something that has to do with guns and changing the law?

[08:15:00] Certainly, in your state, the guns are, those policies are a little bit more on the lenient side, to be sheltered about it. Or is this about culture? Which direction does that question point you in?

JINDAL: Look, I think there will be plenty of time to argue that and figure that out. I'm sure plenty of folks will have their opinions.

At this point right now, the most important thing to do is to love these families, help those that are wounded recover, make sure the police have everything they need to process the evidence to figure out as much as they can about this shooter.

This is a time for healing. There will be a time for those debates and that will be a good debate and good discussion for folks to have. Right now, let's love these folks. Right now, we've got a grieving community. Right now, you have folks in the process of coming back from out of state and some tragic instances have it bury a loved one or another instances to comfort wounded relatives and friends.

Let's give these families all the love and thoughts and prayers we can. That's what we need right now the most.

I know the owner of the theater announced he's going to be setting up a fund to benefit these families. Let's love these families.

CUOMO: That information will be important to get out so we'll be in touch with your office to pass that along. As you know, families of victims often want most is change so that nobody has to live what they are living through again.

Governor, thank you very much. We'll pick up with you at the presser. Thank you for giving us information this morning. We're sorry about the loss to your state.

JINDAL: Thank you very much. Thank you all for the prayers.

CUOMO: Mick?

PEREIRA: All right. We will get to that press conference in a moment.

But, first, President Obama has been briefed on the Louisiana theater shooter while en route to Kenya. In an interview that he gave just yesterday to the BBC before that shooting, he spoke about gun violence in America and the biggest frustration of his presidency.

Michelle Kosinski is in Nairobi ahead of the president's visit. She joins us now -- Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Michaela.

Right. So, while he's traveling here where security has been a concern, he's being briefed about another violent attack within the United States. When you look at his agenda, wanting to do more on gun control versus Congress's feelings on that at the moment, to say that is an uphill battle would be an enormous understatement.

And we heard him sit down and talk about this frustration with the BBC. It's not the first time we have heard him be so outspoken on this issue lately because the attacks keep happening. He said these things only hours before we heard that it had happened yet again. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The one area I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common sense gun safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings. And if you look at the number of Americans --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: The president frustrated with dealing with massacre after massacre. We are dealing with one right now in Lafayette, Louisiana. There's a presser going on right now with the sheriff. Let's listen in.

CRAFT: : -- behind me, our response was almost immediate. There were two police officers who were actually on this property all the time the incident occurred. They were able to make entry into the theater, met quite a few people coming out, as they made their way into the crowd, they heard a shot.

And upon entering the theater, the suspect was found deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Numerous people wounded were located. We also located a deceased female and immediately began first aid. Our local ambulance service had a pretty quick response time as well. They were here within six minutes to care for the victims and to transport to local hospitals.

Our shooter is John Russell Houser. He's a white male, 59 years of age. He previously resided in the state of Alabama.

He's kind of a drifter. He's been in Lafayette since early July as far as we can tell. He was staying at a local motel on University Avenue. We served a search warrant on that motel room at about 4:30 this morning.

He was driving a 1995 blue Lincoln Continental. We found wigs and glasses and disguises basically in his room. His vehicle had a switched license tag on it.

[08:20:00] It was parked right outside an exit door of the theater. It is apparent that he was disguises in his room. His vehicle had a switched license tag on it. It was parked right outside an exit door of the theater.

It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping. What happened is that the quick law enforcement response forced him back into the theater, at which time he shot himself.

No devices were found in his vehicle. No devices were found in the theater. As far as we know, one 40 caliber handgun is involved. That weapon has been recovered. It appears that at least 13 rounds were fired during the time he was in the theater discharging the weapon.

Our victims are: Mayci Breaux, a white female, 21 years of age. She died on scene. Jillian Johnson, a white female, 33 years of age, died at the hospital.

Of the nine victims that were hospitalized, two have been released, one victim remains in critical condition. The quick response by law enforcement is believed to have prevented further deaths.

We are appealing to the public to contact law enforcement if they feel they may know this shooter or have had contact with him because at this point we have very little information about him.

We want the public to call this number, 337-291-8650, that is a direct line into our investigation section and a 24/7 hour number and a person will be monitoring that phone and answering calls.

We ask if you have any information about Mr. Houser to please contact law enforcement.

Our crime scene technicians worked throughout the night to process the scene. As you can imagine, it's pretty horrific. It's a large area to process for physical evidence. A lot of people upon exiting the theater left a lot of possessions behind, so we recovered keys and purses and shoes and whatnot. We're still working inside the theater. A crime scene is still doing some work in there.

The theater has been made safe. There's no devices. We haven't detected any devices. We have not found that Mr. Houser was working with anyone or associated with anyone. We haven't had any other threats at any other theaters.

For now, this theater is closed until we can do all of the work we need to do here to try and piece together what happened. We will continue to update you throughout the day with any information that we come up with.

I want to turn it over to Colonel Mike Edmondson with the Louisiana state police to give a recap of his office's involvement in this investigation.

COL. MICHAEL EDMONSON, LOUISIANA STATE POLICE: First of all, I want to praise the efforts of Chief Kraft and his men and the first responders, the emergency medical technicians that were here, those ambulances.

Like you heard the governor say last night, as the danger was taking place inside, literally, those officers got there and shots were being fired, they went into it because they were worried about the individuals in there.

You heard there's at least 100 people interviewed. That many more, that many and a few more were in the theater itself. I think it's going to be easy at this moment to speculate. Here we are in a movie theater. Why did he come here? Why did he do that?

We don't know that. It's not a possibility -- let's say that's a domestic situation. It wasn't. Here's a guy that was a drifter, like the chief said, that just happened to be in the theater and took two beautiful lives.

Don't lose sight of the fact that these individual individuals had a vision, had a name, they had a future. It wasn't to die as they did horribly in this theater.

Let's remember that as we put information out there. We'll try to get you the facts as we get them. He was in a local hotel. The police have been to the hotel and his house in Alabama. We have talked to his friends and family. That's why we didn't release the information because we didn't want to put other police officers in harm's way.

Look, an incident happened at 7:30 last night and here we had the possibility of the car having some type of explosive devices in it. You look at the back seat. You saw what looked to be some wires.

[08:25:00] It didn't turn out to be anything. We didn't know it was in the trunk.

We actually remotely went inside that car and had to blow out the windows and open up the trunk portion. We did that by a robot because we didn't want police officers to get hurt.

At that point, we went into the movie theater. There was at least three objects that concerned us. We were able to x-ray the objects, deem them safe and completely clear the scene. We did that around 1:30.

So, a situation with 13 gunshots fired, a lot of different scenarios taking place, we were able to clear that and turn that back over to the Lafayette police department where you have the technicians from the crime lab that are inside the building right now. They're trying to assess and find each one of those spent shells and find exactly where those deceased bodies were. They'll take pictures of that.

We kind of try to figure out, maybe there's a motive in determining how we went into the theater, but certainly him coming out and seeing the police arriving put him back in there to where he ended his life. So, he could have come out and done additional harm. That we suspect.

But to put a motive to it is something we can't do right now. I think you need to know that. We're going to support the Lafayette police department. We're going to help them with our detectives, narcotics, our intelligence fusion center. I think when you look at what happened here within minutes police were on --

PEREIRA: We're getting more information. It's been really interesting to hear from officials that the threat is no longer at all. The threat has been subsided.

We know the name of the individual now. This man has been identified as a drifter that is not from the area, originally from Alabama. He took two young women's lives, a 21-year-old woman died at the scene, a 33-year-old woman died later at the hospital.

COUMO: Good news and frustrating news out of the headlines. The frustrating news is that the police don't have a why here. It wasn't a domestic dispute. They found no idea of manifesto, intentionality, or why there?

He's not from Lafayette. He's only been there since July. He's from Alabama. He's 59 years old.

They are asking people to reach out to them. If you go online, you'll be able to find the access number for police.

And then the other headline is that because of the quick police response, which was a function of them being proximate, nearby in the area and people were calling 9/11 right away when the shots fired, they believe that this man planned to fire and exit, to flee. They found disguises. They know he let off at least 13 rounds. There's no word about additional ammunition.

But when the cops showed up, he was forced back inside the theater and wound up taking his own life.

PEREIRA: They are crediting the immediate response from law enforcement for saving lives here. We'll have more after a break. Stay with us.

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