At Least 50 Dead, 200+ Injured At Las Vegas Concert; The Las Vegas Gunman, 64-Year-Old Stephen Paddock, Was Killed By Police.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We've heard stories from people in and around there saying that despite the chaos we've seen, and we've seen some horrific video of the incident and aftermath -- that despite that chaos people were doing whatever they could to help whoever they could. Did you see that as you tried to get yourself to safety?</s>BENGE: I did see a cop and I hope he's, you know, OK right now. He had an assault rifle in his hand and I did see him take cover and try to aim back to see where the bullets were coming from. He must have fired at least 200 to 300, maybe 500 rounds into the crowd from -- I believe it was the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, from what I was told and heard. But just in terms of everything, I saw a bunch of people trying to help. Unfortunately, I also saw a lot of loved ones with their significant others holding them as they passed, and unfortunate things like that. But a lot of it was, you know, people tried to help everyone. And even just to get to my car, since it was kind of far, I hopped in the back of some guy's pickup truck and he stopped and gave me a second to just hop in the back. But I believe they went to the hospital because one of them got shot. But there was a lot of people out there helping, especially Metro and SWAT, and all of them.</s>BERMAN: Taylor Benge, we're glad you made it. So sorry that you had the night that you did. Please give our best to your sister Careem (ph), as well. You were lucky to have each other to pull through this horrific evening. Thanks, Taylor.</s>BENGE: Yes, no problem. Thank you.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: If you are just waking up or just joining us we do have breaking news of the most horrific kind. The worst mass shooting in U.S. history has just happened last night in Las Vegas. This was at an outdoor concert. It was a big music festival and 50 people, at least, have been killed last night by what police say is one gunman. The information we have is that gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the hotel that you can see there in this cell phone video. That's the Mandalay Bay. The gunman was killed, according to the sheriff's department. He was 64 years old. For a while, they were looking for one of his companions. She, too, has been located now. Police believe there are no other gunmen involved. But 50 people, at least, killed. The number just spiked while we were on the air in this staggering fashion. At least 200 people are injured, many of them in critical condition. One police officer, at least, was killed. One is still in critical condition. Again, this is the worst mass shooting we have ever seen in this country.</s>BERMAN: And when you hear the eyewitness accounts, when you hear people talk about what they saw as they tried to flee to safety, you can imagine that the death toll here will go up. I want to go to Jean Casarez who is on the Las Vegas Strip right now and was on the scene, really, in the minutes after the shooting took place. Jean, tell us what you're seeing.</s>JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're here on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip and this is really the aftermath at this point. The crime scene is being processed. Search warrants are being executed. But we are understanding that the hospitals in Las Vegas are overwhelmed at this point and that is the word that the Las Vegas police chief used -- overwhelmed with victims. Family members do not know where their family members may be. The Red Cross is assembling to try to help those victims so they can find out where their loved ones are. But we do know that it was 10:08 last night and remember, here in Las Vegas it was a warm night. It may be the end of September but it was a warm temperature. It was an outdoor concert. Thousands of people were watching and listen to Jason Aldean. And you can see behind me that is the Mandalay Bay -- that large hotel right there. The concert was across the street from the Mandalay Bay -- across the Las Vegas Boulevard. And all of a sudden, people tell me that they started hearing these shots. And one person told me that they happened to look at the Mandalay Bay -- they looked up and they saw on the top floor light, and they saw glass breakage -- they heard it. And it was. The 32nd floor if where officers went and apprehended who we now know as Stephen Paddock, 64 years old. A Las Vegas resident, they say. And we do know that right now they are executing a search warrant in that hotel room. They will have an inventory. We did hear the word rifles, they believed, were in there. A search warrant also will be executed at his home. This city was at a standstill after 10:03 at night. People were being escorted away from the scene. They got on buses. They went to the Thomas & Mack Center, which is a venue at the University of Nevada. The freeways were shut down. McCarran International Airport flights were diverted to other areas and -- because they didn't know what was happening. This community is starting to reopen now but there are so many questions and there are no answers at this point. And as you both said, we don't know the true number of victims because at last count, at least 50 people are dead. At last count, at least 200 are wounded. A Las Vegas police officer remains in critical condition in the hospital. Another officer is also in the hospital. An off-duty Las Vegas officer was killed as he was watching the concert. And I also heard in a press conference they believe officers from other jurisdictions, off-duty, were a part of that audience tonight.</s>CAMEROTA: Jean, thank you very much. Please bring us any updates as soon as you have them from the scene there. We want to bring in our law enforcement veterans and analysts. We have Jim Gagliano and Joe Giacalone with us. Jim, as a police officer, where do you begin? Where do you begin with a crime scene this vast and this many victims?</s>JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST, RETIRED FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT, ADJUNCT ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY: Alisyn, what's going to be so difficult, too, is as you're trying to save lives, and help people, and move the wounded, and people are jumping into vehicles -- I think the country star pointed out that bus that he was on is going to be part of the crime scene because you're trying to determine did the shots come from one direction. What were the trajectory of the bullets? You can do that by how they hit or impacted the glass. And then, all the people that are streaming out of there trying to get as far away from the shooting as possible, you need to interview those folks. So you're not only doing a collection of forensic evidence as in plate readers that might have picked up the two cars that they were looking for or videotape that might have come up in the hotel where they were staying at. But you need to get that human intelligence. It's so critical to track those folks down.</s>BERMAN: And, Joe, we don't know anything about the why. We don't know why this 64-year-old man did it. But we know a little bit now about the how. We know that he got up to this 32nd-floor hotel room. He must have smashed out the window because we don't believe those windows open. And he had a whole bunch of rifles -- a whole bunch of guns with him and it sure sounds like automatic weapons right there.</s>JOSEPH GIACALONE, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE SERGEANT, PROFESSOR, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Well, yes, they definitely sound like automatic weapons and he sounds like he was prepared for a long battle here. He was going to, you know, shoot as many people as he could. And just swapping out guns because, you know, as the barrels get hot you're not going to be able to shoot them, so he was -- he was prepared for that. So he said -- this was -- there's a lot of premeditation here. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he barricaded himself in that room, which would have made the entry point for the cops coming in there even more difficult and even more dangerous. So it's amazing how they were able to get into this location so quickly and neutralize him before he, you know, continued his rampage.</s>CAMEROTA: This was the Route 91 Harvest Festival. There were all sorts of country music stars playing. I believe it was the fourth night. Jason Aldean was on stage. I think he was the last act. He was just finishing his set. It was almost over. It was a huge celebratory scene. Here he is playing. You just heard one of the other country stars say that he saw -- you know, looked out and saw all sorts of parents with kids. Jake Owen was describing that there were kids on parents' shoulders, you know. It was a family experience. We talk all the time about soft targets so, of course, they have security at the concert and they check your bag as you're going into this outdoor venue. But how can you ever know what's going to rain down on you from some hotel window?</s>GAGLIANO: This is the definition of a soft target and we've noticed that the more difficult it is for a terrorist or something that wants to kill people to get onto a plane -- what's happened recently in Europe -- there have been some attacks that have happened as people are checking in at the counter -- soft target. The Ariana Grande concert is another perfect example. Maybe couldn't get past security but was able to wait outside. People coming out of the concert and then blowing himself up. And then, in this instance, maybe he's obviously concerned that they're going to be checking bags as you come into the concert area where you've got this sea of humanity. So instead, get a hotel room, elevate a position just outside of it, and then shoot down into the people.</s>BERMAN: And again, Las Vegas has been prepared for terror for some time. Concern about the New Year's Eve festivities. They've had some vehicle incidents on the strip there where people died. But you don't check bags at most hotels in the United States when you check in. Even in Las Vegas. They have thousands and thousands and thousands of visitors every night with thousands and thousands of bags and who knows what's in them?</s>GIACALONE: Well certainly, and he's a local, too, so it's not like these bags came off an airplane and they were already screened. So he's a local guy so he just drove his car with all these things in it and just checked himself in and probably took his own luggage up there, too. I mean, it's going to be interesting to find out like, you know, the whole check-in process about what he did. Like, oh, I'll take that, don't touch that stuff. You know, this is -- this is, you know --</s>BERMAN: We'll know. I mean, there's one thing that Las Vegas has is cameras.</s>GIACALONE: Yes.</s>BERMAN: There are cameras everywhere so we'll see footage of how he did this and how he got where he carried out that shooting.</s>CAMEROTA: There's always questions in the hours after this. Was this terrorism? How is this not domestic terrorism? This is the definition of domestic terrorism. Sowing terror among all of us. The ripple effect of watching something this horrific happen, it does terrorize the country. But you're saying that it has to, for law enforcement, fit a very specific definition.</s>GAGLIANO: Absolutely, and the only way I think you could caveat and say that this wasn't terrorism is if you had a mental health issue. If you had somebody -- you pointed out earlier the Sandy Hook shooter was a young child who was, you know -- or teenager disaffected and had some mental issues. And yes, to commit a depraved act you have to have some type of mental issues but was this a situation where it was just a mentally unbalanced person or someone, as we talked about before, that's trying to affect political or social aims by using violence, intimidation, or threats of same?</s>BERMAN: They don't have to be mutually exclusive, by the way.</s>GAGLIANO: They don't, John.</s>BERMAN: As you know, you can have terrorists who have plenty of mental health issues. We have some new footage just into CNN of this in the moments after it took place. Let's play it right now.</s>CAMEROTA: It's very graphic, we should warn you.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should just take a gun right there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, right now, we need your truck. We just need to get people over to the hospital, OK?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, go ahead. Put them all in the back.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Put them all in the back.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you -- can you pull over towards the side of the -- you know what? This person right here -- hold up, hold up. Can we get this person in here?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God. This is horrible. Oh, my God.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, hold on. Try it now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.</s>BERMAN: I can tell you what I see here, first of all, is horrific. The aftermath of a horrifying event. More than 50 people killed, more than 200 injured. But what we also see here is an enormous outpouring of heart and bravery in people helping each other, trying to get them to safety.</s>CAMEROTA: Look, this is obviously very graphic stuff. We just want to warn you this is -- these are people with cell phones. Our producers have screened it but they tell us they want us to warn you that it's very graphic. This is obviously somebody running from the scene with their cell phone in their hand because it was just chaos, you know. There could have been a stampede. There were so many tens of thousands of people. But, you know, eyewitnesses have told us it was a controlled as possible. But you can see the terror that everyone is dealing with in trying to get away from the shooting and trying to take some cover here.</s>BERMAN: Just a new bit of information that we got on the investigation. This comes from the Mesquite, Nevada police department, and we do believe that the gunman was living in Mesquite, Stephen Paddock. Let me read this to you. The Mesquite Police Department had no prior contact with the Las Vegas shooting suspect, Stephen Paddock. That's according to the PIO. They said law enforcement had no prior calls to his home address in Mesquite. They did not know how long Paddock had been living in the area. That again, according to the Mesquite Police Department. The suspect is 64-year-old Stephen Paddock. You know, Joe, no prior contact to the suspect at all. No reason for concern as far as law enforcement is saying in that town where he lived most recently.</s>GIACALONE: Which makes it even more scary because here's somebody that's been going behind the radar and then all of a sudden something made him snap. So this is -- you know, this is something that they're going to have to look into it. Generally, we do find out that many people who plan these things, you know, don't want attention brought to themselves. So I think when they go talk to the neighbors they'll be oh, he was a nice guy, he was quiet because generally, people who are planning or plotting some of these things don't want that kind of attention.</s>CAMEROTA: Right, but that's weird, right? I mean, it's weird. There's been a couple of noteworthy things that you guys have pointed out from your law experience. Sixty-four years old, that's older than we've, I think, ever seen with a mass shooter here in the U.S. No prior contact? That's weird because that means no history of domestic violence, no history of calling in threats, no history of bothering the neighbors. I mean, generally, sometimes we see people who do these things that they have become somehow a little unhinged or violent, previously.</s>GAGLIANO: That's usually the first step. You want to see if the suspect or, in this case, the deceased subject had a prior history -- a criminal history. But that's not always the case where they do have a criminal history. It's not -- that's not the end-all, cure-all. Look at Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. I mean, he was never on law enforcement radar and for years was conducting terrorist acts. So that's not the end-all, cure-all. I am -- I'm heartened by watching the first responders. And the first responders aren't just uniformed folks like, you know, are law enforcement professionals like Joe and I used to be. These were people that were just there helping each other.</s>CAMEROTA: Taxicab drivers taking people to the hospital.</s>GAGLIANO: Absolutely. And what we try to stress to folks in this new era -- this new paradigm of what we're dealing with in these mass shootings -- you cannot wait for the cavalry to get there. You've got to do what you can to again, run, hide, fight, and then make sure you go and repeat what you see to law enforcement so you can help them out. But these folks were great in what they did responding and helping each other out. It's incredible.</s>BERMAN: OK. What do you want to know about the guns? We obviously hear what he heard, automatic weapon fire. We know that there were numerous firearms found in this room and the sheriff says rifles.</s>GIACALONE: Well, we want to know where they came from. We want to know if they've been purchased legally, who sold them.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes. If they were automatic rifles they can't be purchased legally, right?</s>GIACALONE: No, but we --</s>BERMAN: They could be altered, though.</s>GIACALONE: They could be altered, yes. I mean, you can purchase one of these rifles, no problem. But then you need to get a kit or whatever it is --</s>CAMEROTA: To make it an automatic.</s>GIACALONE: -- to make it an automatic weapon. And you know what? You're out in the middle of the desert up there. There's a lot of different things going on. You might be able to make a contact through a black market kind of thing. So that's part of the whole investigation. That's what the FBI would want to see. The ATF, I'm sure, is either there or on their way to find out about those guns because that's going to be an important thing.</s>CAMEROTA: Right, but if it's illegal, which it has to be -- either he, you know, doctored it and turned it into an automatic weapon or he bought an automatic weapon, which you're not allowed to do -- then how do you trace it? How do you figure out where it came from?</s>GIACALONE: Well, I mean, every gun has a serial number on it. They'll be able to purchase it. I mean, you can't buy any of these long guns now with the -- from the ban that they had, right, without getting a waiting period. And these are just some of the things that they're going to look for. The connection -- the links between that gun and the people who were involved.</s>GAGLIANO: And just, again, listening as you -- how harrowing it was there. Just the volume of fire and the repetitivity. I mean, it sounded like a military ambush. I mean, the fact that he either had extended magazines or a drum to carry that type of ammunition or, as the sheriff pointed out, there were a number of rifles in there. He probably had loaded magazines in place and as soon as he emptied one of them, reached down and picked up the other one to cause that carnage.</s>BERMAN: All right, we're getting new information into CNN. We're going to take a quick break and reset. The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. At least 50 people killed, 200 injured on the Las Vegas Strip. New developments -- stay with us.