Police: Two Killed In Shooting At UCLA; LAPD Chief Says Shooting Was A Murder Suicide
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Actually standby, Stephanie, we're going to go to Evan Perez, our justice correspondent, who has some new information. Evan Perez, what are you learning?</s>HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: All right, welcome, everybody. I'm Hala Gorani. I want to update you on that breaking news out of Los Angeles. We begin with that dangerous situation unfolding right now on the campus of UCLA. That American university. Police say two people have been shot and killed. They've confirmed this. Reports were a little bit sketchier earlier, but according to police sources, two people killed inside the Engineering Building at the University of California in Los Angeles. The campus is still on lockdown. You are seeing new images now of police officers searching the campus inside the buildings. The Los Angeles police chief says one of the two victims may fact have been the shooter, that that is a possibility, though it is not confirmed. The facility is located in a very densely populated part of Los Angeles, so you can imagine that security forces and officials are saying, listen, this situation is still potentially unfolding, you want to be as safe as possible and shelter in place, especially if you are on campus. This is the final week of classes at the university. Commencement is next Friday, June 10th. People are taking final exams. Kyung Lah joins me now live from Los Angeles with all the very latest. What can you still us on this still developing story, Kyung?</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): I can tell you how it all unfolded, Hala. We got first reports little bit more than a couple of hours ago. There was an alert from the university telling students to shelter in place. The campus was going to be on lockdown, that there were multiple reports of shots being fired in or around the engineering building. This is a building that's right in the center of campus. Students were told to not leave where they are, to avoid the engineering campus. We've seen a tremendous police response. Officers from the university police as well as the LAPD arriving in full force. We have seen them carrying long guns. They are working their way through the various buildings. They are trying to clear each floor. This is a massive job and they are right now still trying to figure out what was happening that led up to this shooting. We're talking to a number of students that are still inside all of the buildings, all of the rooms in this university and they are telling us that they have not been told to exit, that they are still in place. We are getting some new reporting from CNN justice correspondent, Evan Perez. He is he hearing from investigators, from his sources telling CNN that this does appear to be a murder/suicide, that that is one of the theories that investigators are looking at. We do know that there are two victims who are deceased according to the university, as well as LAPD. Those two victims are male and we are hearing from our justice correspondent that this may be a murder/suicide. If that is indeed the case, if one of the victims is the shooter, that will change much of the dynamics on campus. Right now the entire university, as well as UCLA Medical Center, remains on lockdown -- Hala.</s>GORANI: You are saying Evan Perez, our justice correspondent, reporting that potentially this is one of the avenues being explored, but still though telling students at UCLA -- we are talking 43,000 students, plus staff and workers on campus, to shelter in place, means they're not 100 percent sure that they believe there potentially still might be some danger on campus.</s>LAH: Absolutely. What we've heard from people who are still on the campus who have barricaded their doors that they have not been told that they can leave. The entire university, which is in a very dense section of Los Angeles on the west side of Los Angeles, has ground to a halt, including the medical center. This is the Ronald Reagan Medical Center. It is a Level 1 trauma center. People who are inside that trauma center have been told they can't leave. So everything from the medical center to the university remains on lockdown. They have not been given an all-clear. This is one of the avenues that the investigators are looking at. At this point, they have not come out and held a news conference to say that this is what has happened. LAPD chief, Charlie Beck (ph) is on the scene here and we expect to hear much more news soon -- Hala.</s>GORANI: We are expecting in fact in the next few minutes potentially in the next 15 minutes another update from the LAPD. Hopefully we'll get some new information regarding this shooting. Now we know that two individuals are dead inside the engineering building, that they are both male. Do we know anything about other potential injuries, other people who may have been involved at this stage, Kyung?</s>LAH: The only reports that we've gotten, Hala, is that there are two victims, that they are both deceased, and that they are both male. That is all we have heard. There's been nothing we've seen as far as other victims being transported to the nearby trauma center. We have seen ambulances that basically are sitting there, that there have been some gurneys that have returned to the ambulances. We've not seen any victims coming out. What we have been able to watch from some of our affiliate pictures is you are starting to see some students and staff it looks like that they are coming out with their hands up in what is now a classic American scene when it comes to these active shootings on campuses. It is a very sad thing about America that we now know how to behave when there is a gunman on a university campus.</s>GORANI: We know the journalists says well, we cover these pretty often as well, Kyung. Talk to us a little bit about the security forces deployment here? Because it is impressive, by any standard.</s>LAH: By any standard it is. Then if you consider how densely populated this is, you will certainly understand why they have deployed so many officers. Almost immediately, right after that tweet went out warning students to stay in place, shelter in place, aerial pictures that we got showed dozens, dozens of police units from the university. You would expect every campus officer would certainly respond to this but then the LAPD. The entire city of Los Angeles was put on tactical alert. That doesn't mean that Los Angeles was shut down. But that does mean that every police officer is told to be on a higher state of alert because they weren't quite sure what this was. Because of the incredible population density of UCLA, because of the west side, because of, frankly, how difficult it is to get to, LAPD has a massive problem if they have a gunman on the loose. So that is why they've had such a tremendous response.</s>GORANI: All right. Kyung, we are expecting, as I mentioned to our viewers, a press conference by the LAPD any moment now. Just to put some context around this story for our international viewers, what is the campus like? Because this isn't just a couple of buildings inside of an urban environment. It's very big, it's sprawling. So in order to police that and check every building, this could be hours before -- We'll get to that in a moment. Do stay tuned. The LAPD is holding a press conference right now. Let's go to that for more information.</s>CHARLIE BECK, CHIEF, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT: -- no continuing threat to UCLA's campus. We're in the process of releasing students from lockdown, but we need to do so in an orderly fashion and in a way that allows us to make sure there are no other participants. At that point, this investigation will be handed over to robbery/homicide division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The coroner will take custody of the bodies and this will become a homicide investigation. I can't hear you. The method of suicide is gunshot wound. I won't go any further. It is early in the investigation. Many, many questions are unanswered at this point. But I think important thing for people to take away from this is that the campus is now safe. The issue that has occurred has been contained. We are in the process of releasing the campus back to the students. They're in their finals. This is a very stressful time for them and we are trying to alleviate that. We do not believe there -- there is no evidence to support outstanding suspects at this point but we are, out of an abundance of caution, going to continue our search of several of the buildings adjacent to the crime scene. There is evidence there that could be a suicide note, but we do not know that at this point.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible question).</s>BECK: I do not know that. Two male adults.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chief, where did this happen? In a classroom? An office?</s>BECK: In a small office in the engineering building.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did they know each other?</s>BECK: We don't have the identities, nor would I release them until the coroner has verified that. So you can ask all the questions you want about identity, but you're not going to get anywhere.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One gun recovered?</s>BECK: There was a gun at the scene.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was the dead at the scene or dead at the hospital?</s>BECK: They were both deceased at scene. UCLA PD responded to a report of three shots fired. We don't know if there were more than that, but at least three. All right, thank you all very much. There will be continuing information. The school will go about its business of re-opening. Thank you very much.</s>GORANI: That was the Los Angeles Police Department chief, Charlie Beck there confirming one of the avenues that investigators were looking at, which is that it appears as though this was a murder/suicide at UCLA in the engineering department, in one of the engineering department buildings, Engineering 4. And Charlie Beck also went on to say that at least there is some relief here for the students because the campus is in the process of being released back to the students, that there is no continuing threat. That the investigation is now being handed to robbery/homicide, that department at the LAPD, and that the situation is contained, and importantly, that there is no evidence of any outstanding suspects. Juliette Kayyem is our CNN national security analyst. She joins us live now via Skype from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Julia, I guess a sad situation. It appears as though someone was shot, and then there was a suicide. This all happened with a firearm. We understand that a gun was found at the scene, but at least there is no active shooter.</s>JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Exactly right. But as we saw over the course of the last few hours, they -- the UCLA police, with the LAPD, have to assume that it is an active shooter scenario. That's why you saw this massive police presence. I grew up on the border of UCLA. Its border, right? If you go for a run around the UCLA border, it is four miles. So it is a mini city. So they probably just have to come on very strong, tell students to stay put until they knew what seems to be confirmed right now, that this is a tragedy, but it is not going to get bigger.</s>GORANI: I understand even the president, Barack Obama, was briefed on this. Is that standard now for a campus shooting, that the president is given a briefing at the White House?</s>KAYYEM: It's not always standard, but any time that there is an active shooter situation in particular at a university or college, public university like UCLA in a major city, he will likely get briefed just so let him know that something's occurring just in case a reporter or someone asks him about it. But, unfortunately, that's the sort of default briefing standard at this stage because what we don't know in any of these situations is whether or not they are ongoing or not. I do have to say, having been part of a lot of these cases, I do reviews of campus safety active shooter. You saw exactly how it should unfold. You need to protect the students. You tell them to stay put. And figure out what's going on. It may feel like a big lockdown, but they needed to do it because there is really no way to secure that campus, how big it is, how open it is. Unless you just tell people you've got to sort of lockdown.</s>GORANI: Right. Juliette, stand by. Harry Houck is a CNN law enforcement analyst, a retired NYPD detective and he joins us as well. So what do you make of the response here? This was a pretty massive response. We are talking LAPD, FBI, the fire department, everybody really went in when it was thought perhaps that there was a shooter on the loose here.</s>HARRY HOUCK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: You never know what you've got until you get there. So the fact that the -- this is standard procedure now for active shooter incidents and it is also good training for the officers. One of the key things here is that we had a shooting inside an engineering area which tells me right off the bat it is probably not going to be a mass shooting. Number two, whenever you got two bodies and a weapon left at the scene, it is more than likely almost every time a murder/suicide. All right? So I think like the LAPD had said that there is no longer any kind of danger. And that the students will probably be coming out of the lockdown very soon. But what they are doing is they are taking extra precautions just to make sure there is that very, very slight possibility there might be another shooter involved. I can't tell by being at the scene. But it does look like just like exactly LAPD said, it is a murder/suicide because there was a weapon found on the scene.</s>GORANI: Right. That's what the LAPD chief was saying, in fact, Charlie Beck, that it appeared as though that is what it was, there was no suicide note that they know of, but a gun was left at the scene. I mean, you have all these departments. You have the fire department as well. When you see this type of response, this has become sort of a familiar scene. I mean, sadly it has to be said. We see the helicopter shots and everybody knows what to do and there is a complete campus lockdown. It seems as though the response is immediately anticipating, Harry, the worst case scenario.</s>HOUCK: Right. Always expect the worse and thank God it's less. Fact is, just shows you that law enforcement has learned from the past and that these situations are very well coordinated. Federal authorities, state authorities and local authorities that have coordinated. You could see how fast the response in UCLA, which is a large institution out in California. Where they probably worked very closely with them in the past, probably had some active shooter drills in the past so that everything, the response today, was almost perfect.</s>GORANI: All right, Juliette Kayyem, Harry Houck, thanks very much to both of you for joining us. Well, it is a sad story, appears a murders/suicide took place in one of the buildings at UCLA. But the good news here, of course, if you can call it that at this stage, is that there is no active shooter, that it was not some sort of shooting spree. It appeared as though it was contained to that building according to the LAPD chief. So that brings an end to that particular development in California. We'll bring you more if we hear more. There is a lot more news to come this evening. Major headlines out of the UK as the "leave" campaign makes a big push. And on the other side of the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton calls Republican rival, Donald Trump, a fraud. Strong words from her. We'll take a closer look at her campaign's fresh tactics to take on the frontrunner. That's just ahead. Stay with us.