Details Emerging About Suspected Ottawa Shooter; Interview with Jim Munson
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news, we are live in Ottawa, Canada, a nation on edge, worrying what comes next. A deadly shooting terrorizing the nation's capital, a soldier is dead. Lawmakers forced to flee for their lives. The prime minister vowing resolve.</s>STEPHEN HARPER, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Canada will never be intimidated.</s>CUOMO: This morning, new details on the gunman, his past and his conversion to Islam. The victim, a soldier and a father, and the hero sergeant-at-arms who reportedly gunned down the shooter, stopping him cold. Plus, new fears. Will there be more attacks like this?</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, breaking overnight -- another White House fence jumper, this time the man apprehended just moments later. And, police and protesters clash in Ferguson, Missouri, overnight. Protesters demanding justice for Michael Brown and the arrest of Officer Darren Wilson.</s>CUOMO: A special edition of NEW DAY starts right now.</s>CUOMO: Good morning, and welcome back to a special edition of NEW DAY. I'm live from Ottawa, Canada, following what is only described as a chaotic and terrible day, a gunman opened fire, leaving a Canadian soldier dead in an attack. The prime minister is simply calling terrorism, Alisyn.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, Chris. Yes, I'm Alisyn Camerota in New York. Those attacks bringing homeland terror into focus, not only in Canada but, of course, here in the United States as well. So, Chris, we've talked to our security experts who said the number of people here on the no fly list in the U.S. is 800. So, we'll get into how they monitor those people. But, first, give us the new details from Ottawa.</s>CUOMO: Look, the big headline has to be this is the future, and it's not to scare. It's to create urgency, little attacks by small-minded people who can buy in to some perverse notion of jihad. That's the threat and that's what we saw here. It started at the National War Memorial, then the parliament building, and literally brought Ottawa, put it back on its heels in a crippling gridlock. Downtown was in lockdown for more than 10 hours mostly because of the confusion created by this, so many eyewitness accounts there were two, three, five shooters. Now authorities say there was one man and he is dead. His name for what it's worth, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, raised in Canada. He has a troubled criminal history and apparently had converted to Islam, clearly didn't understand what the faith is supposed to be about, radicalized probably himself, wanted to go to the Middle East. How do we know that? Officials in Canada saw enough information about him to flag him and take his passport. So, right now, there's a big coordinated effort going on between the U.S. and Canada to figure out how this man got to this point and what it means going forward.</s>STEPHEN HARPER, PRIME MINISTER, CANADA: We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.</s>CUOMO (voice-over): Prime Minister Stephen Harper promising justice after what he calls, a terrorist act on Canada's capital.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guys, there's a shooter on the loose.</s>CUOMO: Shots ring out at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Out of the way! Move, move.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the sudden I just hear a shot, and, just, pow!</s>CUOMO: The shooter, 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Muslim convert. But officials say he had a troubled past and was planning to fight overseas.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guy came from the side and came out with a rifle and shot at the man, and then the guy went falling down.</s>CUOMO: The suspect fatally shooting Canadian Corporal Nathan Cirillo. The 24-year-old father was one of two soldiers standing guard. Then around 10:00 a.m., the shooter hijacked this car and continued his rampage just a few hundred yards away. Entering through doors meant for officials, he starts firing inside Canada's parliament building.</s>JOHN MCKAY, CANADIAN PARLIAMENT: I was literally taking off my coat, going into the caucus room and, we heard this boom-boom-boom.</s>CUOMO: Police scrambling to protect Canada's top officials, rushing them outside to safety. Some lawmakers in the building huddle in a caucus room piling up chairs against the door to barricade themselves in -- as police exchange a barrage of bullets with the shooter.</s>JOHN WINGROVE, REPORTER, "THE GLOBE AND MAIL": We are sort of flanking down the hallway. It looked like the guy popped out or they saw him. They fired a lot, a tremendous amount of bullets fired.</s>CUOMO: Amid the chaos, parliament Sergeant at Arms Kevin Vickers fires the fatal shot, but not before three others are injured. Vickers killing the suspect near the parliamentary library, fellow officers calling him a hero.</s>JOHN VICKERS, SERGEANT-AT-ARMS, VICKERS BROTHER: When you hear those gunshots and know that your brother was in the middle of all of that, it was a very surreal experience and horror.</s>CUOMO: This is the second time this week Canada waking up to headlines of terror. On Monday, Canadian authorities say a radicalized Islamist hit and killed a Canadian soldier with his car.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I had a chance to talk with Prime Minister Harper.</s>CUOMO: President Obama says we have to remain vigilant.</s>OBAMA: When it comes to dealing with terrorist activity, that Canada and the United States has to be entirely in sync. Not only is Canada one of our closest allies in the world, but there are our neighbors and our friends.</s>CUOMO: The sun is now up here on the national memorial, on what is certainly not just a new day but a new reality here. Let's bring in Deb Feyerick. All right. We have two layers of analysis. The first is the shooter, who he is and how he got to this point relevant only for what it teaches us about detection and prevention. Otherwise, he is a meaningless individual as far as we're concerned. And then what does this mean about this threat here in Canada and in the U.S., going forward?</s>DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, both excellent questions. Look, treating terrorism is a very organic process. Canadian authorities believe they were doing the right thing by essentially confiscating this man's passport because he had an intention to go fight jihad. Because they couldn't hold him, that was the flaw, that was the vulnerability. They could not detain him. They couldn't hold him. So, they had to keep him under surveillance. They had to monitor him the way they monitor 90 other people. That clearly will be a major topic of discussion. Also, these lone wolf attacks, it's virtual impossible to stop, individuals that act on their own. Oftentimes, they may send out signals on social media, Facebook, Twitter, letting people know their intentions, their passion for extremism and radicalism. But what authorities cannot do, is it's almost virtually impossible to know when they're going to strike, how they're going to strike, you know, whether the confiscation of the passport brought this man to the brink, brought them to the edge, whether he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. Look, one of the things that you mentioned, Chris, and this is the whole lone wolf thing, is there's a lot of crazy out there and when you're dealing with these kinds of people, it's not simply that they think they're going to go out as heroes, but they also are pre- disposed to this kind of behavior. There is a sort of psychosis in them, that they want to do something to be remembered by to fight for the cause.</s>CUOMO: The deranged, the disaffected, thinking that mistakenly Islam, as they see it, is some avenue to dignity for themselves.</s>FEYERICK: Well, that's exactly right. And as you mentioned, look, this is somebody who had a criminal history, sort of a low-level criminal but he was raised in what appears to be a very good family, his father's a businessman, his mother works for the immigration department here. So, he had all opportunities in order to succeed. There are reports also he went out to western Canada. He was working out there as a laborer. So whether he was in search of himself, whether he just wasn't having very much success it's unclear. But a lot of these fighters, these terrorists, actually many of them are raised in decent surroundings. So, it's a balance.</s>CUOMO: Small-time guy but every intelligence expert I've spoken to on both sides of the border says this is a much bigger thing to work on than a group that wants to kill thousands with a big bomb.</s>FEYERICK: And look at what they've done, Chris.</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>FEYERICK: This entire town was shut down so one man, and now there are images of lawmakers barricaded inside parliament that are being used by ISIS propaganda. ISIS is taking credit for this simply because it succeeded. If it failed nobody would know with this. But you see the lockdown, this is what ISIS and all the other terrorists want.</s>CUOMO: Right. But at the same time, it's also a message of what a horrible definition someone can have of success and that's something that should certainly be condemned of anyone of sound mind. Deb, thank you for the reporting. We'll check back in with you. And as Deb was mentioning, imagine being a member of parliament in this massive building and gunfire just rocketing around inside of it, the sounds are so booming and not knowing where it was coming from or from how many. One of the men who had to survive that is Senator Jim Munson. He's a member of a Liberal Party here in Canada. He was inside parliament during the attack. Your wife, Senator --</s>JIM MUNSON, SENATOR, LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA: Yes. Good morning. Nice to see you.</s>CUOMO: -- was near the memorial where it began.</s>MUNSON: She was just right behind the other side of memorial. She let me off at work yesterday morning, and was parked just before the light the memorial, saw a brown car parked there, unusually no flashing lights, saw the gentleman get out of the car, seemed rather strange, got to the passenger side of the car, picked up what appeared to her a blanket. And so, that's really strange, and watched him walk up and as she slowly went by the car there's a traffic jam, she looked up again, couldn't hear anything but saw maybe a flint of light. As a gentleman was leaving, she saw him coming down what she thought was a pipe, but obviously the gun was wrapped in that blanket. So, it was unnerving for her, for sure.</s>CUOMO: Oh, absolutely. And you know, again, thank God that he had a sense of deranged purpose that didn't take him in her direction.</s>MUNSON: We could have had a worse tragedy here in Ottawa. We lost our innocence yesterday in the capitol. We recognize what happens in Washington with barricades and so on and so forth, and Westminster in London with the security of the machineguns and so on and so forth. We have good security here, but it's an accessible place, accessible Parliament Hill. At least --</s>CUOMO: More than most capitols, right? I mean, you have millions of people who go through to visit. But the hill is used for yoga, and people see it as a place to hang out and relax and the security reflects that.</s>MUNSON: Right, but you know what? That should never change. That can't change. We'll probably have a bigger police presence, obviously, that will happen. But we can't change the way we are as Canadians. We're in part of a coalition and we've got to expect these kind of things to happen in our country.</s>CUOMO: So, what happens, Senator, when you're in that building and you start hearing the booming?</s>MUNSON: First, before the booming, security guard ran in, we had a committee going on, and began to yell, "Get out, get out! There's a gunman here. Get out, get out." I thought it was surreal, it was not happening, there was no sense of panic. But then, moments after that, we heard the pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, the sound of guns in the hall of honor. We thought it was outside, but it was inside. We went to a place in Parliament Hill and spent nine hours there, it was a minor inconvenience to what we're thinking of today in this country. You know, you have lost a lot of soldiers. When we lose one, we hurt, and it's, right now there's a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier there, been there for years. Now we have a soldier who died on that Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He's a known soldier and as a nation we are grieving for him.</s>CUOMO: Well, I'll tell you -- in the U.S., when you lose one it hurts. And today, we're planning a procession of members of parliament, organizing around the Cenotaph, the unmarked grave, and hopefully this becomes a gathering moment for you to figure out what to do going forward because look -- you know, the senator was a long time journalist by the way and covered a lot of the same issues we're dealing with today. It's easier to deal with an organized group that wants to kill thousands than stopping deranged people who want to kill one.</s>MUNSON: You can't arrest somebody for what he or she thinks. The gentleman in province of Quebec that ran over the two soldiers, the police were on to him all the way through but they took his passport away so he couldn't go to the place he wanted to go to kill, so he chose to kill here. And this is the kind of society that we live in, in a free society and we should never back down from that. But I worry sometimes, sometimes, there's complacency. Somebody said to me, or I heard this morning on the radio, it was only one man and one gun. Well, it was only one man and one gun with JFK in 1963 which changed the face of the world. I don't want to overdramatize this but this is the reality.</s>CUOMO: But also, look, and pinpoint of terror -- and not to ascribe too much intelligence to the action that we saw here yesterday and Monday, but the goal of it is to create fear. What is more frightening to your daily reality, the idea someone will fly a plane into a building and kill thousands, or that someone randomly can come out from around a corner and kill you specifically? I think the answer is obvious and that's why you have to figure out how to deal with the threat.</s>MUNSON: We're all looking over our shoulders, everybody now in this country. We thought an ocean separated us from the realities of the world in Europe and the Middle East. We thought a border separated us from some of the problems in the United States. Well, that's no more, and there are people who are radicalized in this country, and I expect we'll see some kind of random attack.</s>CUOMO: So, what do you do here, you have a burgeoning Muslim community by per capita, much bigger than in the United States. You have about 200,000 Muslims coming into the country a year. You have to presume, you know, predominantly they are people who just live their faith the right way.</s>MUNSON: Absolutely.</s>CUOMO: What do you do to deal with monitoring in such a balk situation?</s>MUNSON: Well, that's for the security and police to do. I think we have to show empathy today for the Muslim community because the Muslim community --</s>CUOMO: The true Muslim community.</s>MUNSON: Yes, absolutely, because they're being stereotyped and I think we have to be sensitized to their beliefs and what they are doing, and I think that security, police, social media, wherever we're at, that we've got to reach out to the Muslim community that we do care about.</s>CUOMO: Well, this is a situation obviously we keep saying Ottawa, four homicides last year, it is not a city that is used to being under the threat of great violence. But now, this was a wake-up call, we see the situation highly policed. Senator, good luck --</s>MUNSON: Pleasure to talk to you.</s>CUOMO: -- on finding ways forward and the U.S. is coordinating heavily because this is the real threat we're dealing with.</s>MUNSON: It's good to have a good neighbor.</s>CUOMO: Senator, good to have you here and thank God you're safe and your wife as well, probably more important.</s>MUNSON: Yes, absolutely. Thank you.</s>CUOMO: Alisyn, back to you.</s>CAMEROTA: Chris, it is fascinating and different to hear how differently their capitol operates than ours. And, again, to your point, only four incidents of violence last year.</s>CUOMO: Yes. And yet, even in the U.S. capital where things are supposed to be somewhat safer, people just hop the fence in our capitol, one of them got into the White House, happened again last night. The threat of small-timers doing small things that can kill people is very difficult to deal with and contend ways. But we have to find ways, Alisyn. That's a challenge, and a big reason we're in Ottawa this morning.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, we're going to talk to our security experts about that momentarily. Thanks so much, Chris. Let's get over to John Berman. He's in for Michaela with some other top stories. Hey, John.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks so much, Alisyn. Breaking overnight -- protesters call for Officer Darren Wilson to be arrested. This was a planned demonstration. It comes after Michael Brown's autopsy results were leaked, claiming the unarmed teen was shot at close range. Now, some analysts suggest the findings corroborate Officer Wilson's story that he and the teen struggled in or near his patrol car before he shot Brown dead. A 3-month-old girl from the United States was killed and eight others hurt when a car slammed into them at a Jerusalem tram stop. The driver identified police as a Palestinian from east Jerusalem, died after he was shot by officers as he tried to get away. Officials say they are treating this as a terrorist act. With they say the suspect had been locked up in prison for, quote, "terrorism." The U.S. military will be tasked with training moderate Syrian fighters to defend Syrian territory rather than seize it back from ISIS. That is according to "The Washington Post." The fighter will be flown to Saudi Arabia where they will be trained for eight weeks. The first units are expected to be deployed within six months. President Obama has made it clear he does not want American ground troops in Syria. So, a mishap of sorts on the tarmac in Minneapolis. The two Delta planes clipped wings Wednesday night as they were taxiing away from the gate. I believe we have a picture of one of the passengers as he took it from the plane. There it is -- one flight was headed to Los Angeles with 171 passengers on board, the other headed to Louisville with 74 passengers. No one was injured but the planes were damaged and as a result, people were put on different planes bound for their destinations.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, that's good. You can't fly when the ping is tilted up like that.</s>BERMAN: No, no, it's not supposed to work that way.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, mishap in the tarmac -- I don't like those words together. John, thank you. We have more ahead on the Canada attack, the shooter's bizarre past and how it led to this violent end. What was his motivation? We'll break that down. Plus, the White House's security scare went much better last time. We're happy to report. Another man jumps the fence but this time they released the guard dogs. He's facing charges. We'll show you what happened.