Las Vegas Shootings; Friends Mourn Slain Vegas Cops
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Very impressed. Very impressed.</s>BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, guys.</s>MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good to have you with us, Brooke. Always a pleasure.</s>BERMAN: That is all for us AT THIS HOUR. I'm John Berman.</s>PEREIRA: And I'm Michaela Pereira. "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.</s>ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Bizarre details behind the tragic shooting in Las Vegas.</s>DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ashleigh, this appears to be a calculated attack on police officers, especially now that you have this manifesto and other online writings where this couple expressed anti-law enforcement views. Now police are just trying to piece it all together.</s>SIMON (voice-over): A raid at an apartment in Las Vegas, possibly the home of the two suspects involved in Sunday's shooting spree. An area around the apartment was cordoned off. Local affiliates report an explosion. Apparently by a flash bang grenade set off by police. A law enforcement source tells CNN the suspects were a married couple with extremist views towards law enforcement.</s>SHERIFF DOUG GILLESPIE, LAS VEGAS METRO POLICE: It's a tragic day. It's a very, very difficult day.</s>SIMON: Around 11:22 a.m. on Sunday, about 10 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, two people, one male, one female, opened fire inside this pizza restaurant. Witnesses hear them declare the ambush a revolution.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They had a backpack and I saw the gun in their hand and he just told me to tell the cops that it was a revolution.</s>SIMON: When police arrived, they discovered that two of their own were murdered. They'd been identify as 41-year-old officer Alyn Beck and 31-year-old Igor Soldo, both leaving behind wives and young children.</s>GILLESPIE: What precipitated this event, we do not know. My officers were simply having lunch.</s>SIMON: Authorities say one officer was able to fire back before being killed. The assailants then grabbing the officer's guns and their ammunition.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The man that shot him was hugging him, like -- like this, but I think he was going for his gun, try to get the officer's gun.</s>SIMON: The duo then headed across the street to this Wal-Mart, killing a woman near the front entrance.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But no (ph)</s>SIMON: Police converged onto the scene, exchanging gunfire inside. But before they could apprehend the pair, the female attacker shot the male suspect, then turned the gun on herself.</s>SIMON: Police also found backpacks at the scene belonging to the suspects, although the contents have yet to be disclosed. They also found some flags or insignias, once again indicating that this had been thought out. But why this particular day and why those police officers, we still don't know. Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: Dan Simon for us in Vegas. Thank you for that, Dan. And joining me now to talk more about this couple's extreme views are CNN's senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns, as well as the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mark Potok, who's live with us from Montgomery, Alabama. And the Southern Poverty Law Center, by the way, tracks people with extreme views on racism and government and law enforcement. And I will get to that in just a moment. But first to this couple. I know, Joe, that you have been tracking more details on this couple, what they left behind, what their motives might have been. What have you found out?</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, first, let me say, CNN is not reporting the name of this couple, at least at this point. The key question being raised right now is whether the shootings were somehow</s>BANFIELD: Well, and that may be very well what a lot of family members of the dead would appreciate, not to make these people more celebrated than they hoped possibly to be. Mark, let me talk to you a little bit about this. We don't know everything yet, but what we're learning from the police is that they definitely were connected to militia movements in some way and that they definitely had anti-law enforcement, extreme anti-law enforcement views. Your work tracks this. Do you have a good gauge of just how bad the circumstances are out there? How many of these types of people might just be out there?</s>MARK POTOK, DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, we have followed up on the couple who we all believe carried this out. We have the names. And looking at their Facebook pages, we see very clearly they absolutely are in the anti-government patriot movement. They have all kinds of connections to other groups. They posted there -- he posted -- the man posted the day before the shooting saying a new day is coming, and hoping that all their sacrifices will be worth it. Moreover, the same man posts on his page way back on May 25th that he, in fact, was at the Bundy ranch standoff, which occurred in mid-April, or had been, rather, and, in fact, had been there through the whole thing. So, you know, I think what happened with that standoff between Cliven Bundy, the rancher, and armed federal agents back in April was a huge victory for the patriot movement, for the militia movement. These groups felt --</s>BANFIELD: Well, and I want to be really clear, Mark - I just want to be really clear that, you know, CNN has been trying to track down the movements of these two shooters, specifically with regard to the Bundy ranch, and Mr. Bundy himself, Cliven Bundy himself, says that there were thousands who showed up and he doesn't know if, in fact, they were there. And it is also not 100 percent confirmed that they were there. Just that a lot of the rhetoric seems to be very similar. But we're continuing our work to try to track that down as well. And my thanks to both Joe Johns and to you, Mark Potok, for looking into this and try to track down any kind of detail as to what would lead to this kind of action. Thank you to the both of you. The extreme and the violent views ended up being very deadly for two police officers and for an innocent bystander as well. And a friend of one of those officers has written something very, very powerful, not only about his friend on the right, but also about the kind of person that would do this, and how we all need to keep it all in perspective. That story, the live interview, coming up next.