all we know with specificity to be able to pass on to you. he was placed in one police car, municipal police car has been transferred to a sheriff's car, you'll note the vehicles are different. so right now, we have just crested the top of the 6:00 p.m. hour on the east coast, we are dealing with what is the 12th school shooting in our country in 2018 so far this year, you see the graphic at the bottom of your screen, according to law enforcement sources, we are reporting at least 20 injured in this. we don't know, teachers, students, clerical help, other adults who were in the school, school resource officers, which is the kind of new label for security personnel, we have had one death confirmed by the local sheriff, but obviously they take the wounded in all cases, they endeavor to take the wounded to hospitals that are set up for

that, a level 1 trauma center in the area, brow waard county, ve populous place, the school is on the far western edge, think of it as kind of the metropolitan miami area runs out and the protected area of the florida everglades takes over. form msnbc analyst and former new york city police commissioner bill bratton. we have had some shootings around our country as of late in the past couple of years. let's talk about the people we saw today, the 4:00 to 12:00 shift is under way for so many in law enforcement across the country. no one who works in broward county expected to be called to a mass casualty incident today. every one of them we saw was running into danger.

>> the rapidity of the response has improved in the last several decades, in the case of shootings, mass shootings, lone gunmen, the idea of responding to a school campus, not knowing what you're coming into, just that there's been a shooting, the rapidity of the officers and the s.w.a.t. officers, you have students fleeing, you have parents beginning to respond to text messages from their children. just imagine the scene around that school, these aerial shots, the idea of taking care of the children, reassuring the apartments, making sure there's no other gunman and then a mile away, they captured the lone

gunman in this case. but in times of crises, in times of emergency, they can be like our fire departments, counted on to step up. today apparently down in florida once again they stepped up. >> when you need them, they are there. viewers watching, the left-hand side of our screen, may have noticed that this sheriff's car is now under escort, there's a minivan in front of the sheriff's car that is part of this small motorcade, we expect that this man is being taken to police headquarters for questioning. let's go back to tammy lightner for more details.

>> reporter: let me just tell you a little bit more about what i know. i do know that the students initially thought that this wasn't gun fire. they have been through several fire alarm drills and so when the fire alarm went off, the students actually thought it was just another drill. and then when they heard gunshots, some of them thought it was firecrackers. the teachers here who had trained for these types of things, they did a very good job of keeping the students calm, we do know that they were on lockdown for about two hours. and so initially the students had no idea what was going on, but as that time went on, they did realize they were involved in yet another school shooting. >> tammy, i won't elongate it with further questions that tammy can't hear. again, this is the sheriff's vehicle carrying the suspect, about the suspect we only know what we have been told by sheriff's deputies, the public information officer, we only know what we can see with our two eyes, the man, police have

said was the person of interest here, right there, maroon top, short hair cut, in cuffs, dark pants, black boots. it appears they brought them out of the car to talk to him or photograph him further. that is a police car, per se, vehicle 9407, and indeed, i can now see they were taking his photograph, that's why they stood him up. he's been transferred to the sheriff's department vehicle. the sheriff's vehicle under escort is pulling into what, let's assume is a municipal center for processing of this suspect. you've also seen the graphics, perhaps, at the bomttom of our screen, we're going with the minimums we have been told that

we can count on, that would be 20 injured, various injuries, various states of condition at the hospital. i think there's reason to believe it is a mix between civili civilians, adult teachers and perhaps students, but there are a whole lot of families in southern florida tonight who are very anxious because their children have -- all they've been told is their children have been transported to the hospital. clint watts, an fbi veteran who we normally talk to about matters of state and government is with us to talk about this matter of law enforcement. clint, i'm going to talk to you while we watch the live picture, they're gloving up to bring this suspect out of the back of the car. we'll get to see him walk into the building while we talk. i want to talk to you about changes in procedure for this kind of thing. in just the years in which these mass shootings have become so

pronounced, and, okay, this suspect appears to have been changed out of his clothes and is in kind of a hospital-style gown, walking with head down, into the central booking facility. and that's it. surrounded by sheriff's deputies wearing kevlar vests. clint, how has the procedure changed, there used to be a long delay where it was mandatory that everybody wait for the local s.w.a.t. team to arrive. now however, with school resource officers who are there because of the number of school shootings in our society, a lot of people have learned if they can act right away, sometimes it better to try to put down that gunman. >> that's right and the response has changed dramatically, and in particular, if you remember back to columbine, the standard procedure back then was to stand your ground outside, form a perimeter, wait it out and try and figure out the situation, but what the end result of that

became lots of casualties. it allowed the shooters more and more time to inflicting damage on their targets. so in the last several years, police try to get in there immediately, try to take out the shooter to capture him. the other part in terms of procedures that have changed is how the classrooms react to it. if you remember back maybe 15 years ago, people tended to flee the campus as quickly as possible. what you have seen now and it sounds like these teachers and administrators executed in the classroom today was to barricade in place, lock the doors, keep the students, keep accountability of them and wait until law enforcement can gain control of the situation, that's the two major changes that are there. while this is devastating, the

execution by law enforcement and the school, they executed in the way they were probably prepared and answer. what we can't answer and what our society can't answer is why do we allow this proliferation of attacks to continue this our schools. it happens routinely and often. to think that families now are worried about people carrying a gun in and their kids being shot at school is their number one concern. i mean the drills we executed 30 and 40 years ago were president tornadoes, not about active shooters. it's the number one concern in these classrooms and they executed the plan well, it speaks to why would we allow this to go on in our society. >> and places like columbine, colorado, a place forever linked with the kind of school shooting that ended the era of innocence and started this era of i think we said 12 so far this year.

i have one question about fire alampl ala alarms, when i first heard this was a component in this case, i worried because they can be used by good guys and bad guys. if you're a victim, if there's a shooting where you work, it's a way to alert the authorities that something bad has happened. on the other hand they have been used by bad guys to force an evacuation and bring people out in the open, and that's what made me worry. on top of that, they had had this fire drill earlier today, so the sound of the bells was not as alarming as it might have been yesterday. >> that's probably a fluke. you have to run regular emergency response and fire drills. what i think is important in this situation, is like you mentioned, the school resource officers and the administration and the teachers understanding and interpreting these signals

and following procedure. it sounds like that actually happened quite well today and it minimized, we'll have to see how the investigation plays out. but ultimately teachers have a whole new role in these classro classrooms, it's not only about what's going on in terms of how to administer discipline on the students, it's also about how to you react to these tragic incidents essentially crowd control and protection. that's something that really didn't play out several decades ago. >> if you spend any time in new york city, for example, you cannot go in the new york city subway system without seeing a poster containing that phrase, it's been a hugely successful public mindfulness advertising campaign since 9/11. jim cavanaugh was saying, and he's so right, if this guy grot out of a vehicle and walked up

to a high school building with a visible long gun by his side, that should have sparked a lot of alarms and obviously we'll see it as some form of it on surveillance video. >> i think that's quite certain, we're going to see the precursors on how this actually played out. another thing i think we usually see in these cases is that there were warning signs, when you look back it's easy to piece it together, but you often don't know. these shooters tend to put off many signals that this might be coming. so when we look back on this how do we assess that across the board so we can be more pre-emptive to someone prone to violence in our classrooms. >> and jim, how do you personally process the fact that, let's go ahead and predict, this guy, approximately 18 years old is what cops an edp, an emotionally disturbed

person. he had a grudge, he had a problem, he had motive, he had access to a weapon and here we are again for the 12th time in our still new year. >> most warnings, i have found out this in my career, most warnings are subtle warnings, and the warning is not always really big. it's sometimes something that's very subtle. a social media post, a that may alert law enforcement. i wasn't in arkansas but i was on duty in atf, the younger boy

was in the school and he asked to be excused and on the way running out, he pulled the fire alarm and he ran up to meet his buddy in the woods, a 13-year-old, they had two guns and they killed five children. and they pulled the fire alarm. and you know, that's an entrapment type diabolical method we see in terrorists, eric rudolph, he used entrapment terrorism. but to see it in young juveniles in school shootings, you even have a diabolical entrapment method in their murder. they're planning it, they want to seek that revenge, we have got to be alert to the subtle warnings, we have got to give the schools the tools, mental

health restraining orders. we need to act. and i will say, try to act with the power you have. you and i were talking, you know, as you're a journalist and i'm an analyst and we're talking and that's what we can do. but other people have different powers. you know, the president could get to the podium and say, he's asking every american who has children in school to lock their guns. i mean he could make it really an important message, the leaders in the congress could do that, every governor of every state could hold a press conference and do that. i can tell you that would save a tremendous amount of children's lives, if they would reach every parent in america who could lock their guns up. maybe that didn't happen in this case, but it happens in many cases that we have seen, and as we talked about, there's been 18 just this year. so in many of those cases, the guns came from home.

in the jonesboro, arkansas case i just discussed, the gun came from the grandfather's house. leaders can do things like that because they have power, school superintendents can send a notice to every parent, if you've got guns, you've got to lock them up. it's a false belief that your child won't do it no matter how good they are, because every parent of every shooter believed that as well. so it's a false belief. that's a starting point to secure guns. but we have got to do better with our leadership to work around these things, and prism tprism -- perimeters and school resource officers inside, it's not enough. you've got to have a better way to stop these people on the way in. >> how about if you go to a teacher's convention, any gathering of educators where they have booths selling their

wears for classrooms, some of those are white boards that you can take off the ball and shield in an active gunman situation. >> it's a good thing, it's crazy we got to have it, but it's a good thing. i believe you win by fighting a war on all fronts, you can't fight on one flank, you've got to fight on all fronts, the mental health front, the good strong arms laws front, you've got to fight on the security front, on the perimeter, on inside, on barricades, on escaping, on fighting if you can, it's not one thing, it's all those things and you got to use the power that you possess. if you're the school superintendent, leverage that power. tomorrow say what if we had this shooting in our school yesterday, what would we do today? now don't, you know, unfortunately, this school in florida has got to deal with the reality of it. many schools today haven't had

it, they can deal with it as if it happened and really tighten up. would you want somebody outside to make sure this doesn't happen at your school? is there a person who's made comments? is there a person you need to do more with, give more counseling to, and do we need to develop better systems across the board for all of us about coping skills, about the things that life throws at you. can you get knocked down and get back up. that's the people we need to value. we need to value, just like we did with our fathers and grandfathers, to value the people that get knocked down and get back up. those are people that succeed, that are the leaders that have the scars of life, and we've got to show everybody how important that is. >> jim cavanaugh, with a lifetime in law enforcement, from patrol to the upper reaches of the trade, as one of the essential voices we call on when we cover a tragedy like this one today. we also wanted to share with our audience the following interview.

this is a student by the name of elijah williams, reacting after the shooting, obviously everybody okay. reacting after the shooting with this student's father to here now this videotape from earlier. >> reporter: tell me what happened. >> we thought it was just a fire drill because the alarm went off. so we all evacuated, like they do it like every other day. but this was our second fire drill today. so it was kind of different. so we went outside, then everyone started running back inside, we're thinking like it's an evacuation, like a gas leak because they prepared us like three weeks ago before this. we did go back inside, and we did hear shots, we thought it was blanks, that's what our teacher told us, because we're thinking it's just a drill. so we're inside and he gets a notification that we have to go

hide, so we all hide and they barricade the backdoor, so we're all sitting there and i'm calling my mom and telling her that i'm okay, we're safe in the room and we're like in the safest room in the school, because like it's a back room that really much people don't know about. but, yeah, and then the s.w.a.t. team came and they evacuated us out of the room that we were in to go into another room and we were just sitting there and a whole bunch of kids from all different classes that got lost with their teachers were there. and we all got moved to the library and we just had to silt in there since then. >> again, notice how together and composed, just the two students we have spoken with in the last half hour have been. as if it's the easiest day of their lives, on what may turn out to be the worst day of their lives at their school. we're working on firmer numbers,

there are a number of reports circulating threw the day on casualties. nbc news is just not comfortable until we get a number of our own, suffice to say, it appears this is a mass casualty event in terms of individuals who may have been dead on arrival, upon arrival at local hospitals. bill bratton, former commissioner of the nypd is back with us. bill, i'm just astounded at how much the nomenclature, the procedure of our age has been drilled into young people who should not have to worry at all about this, ideally. >> school was certainly different when we were growing up. >> yes. >> versus what young people today have to be prepared for. you're correct about the remarkable composure that those two young people showed earlier,

because even though they were distant from the actual event, the trauma spreads like ripples in a pond and a little later this evening they're going to feel it and that's where the counselors are going to be important, they might not be feeling it in the moment of excitement, and when they go home tonight and they start hearing what the actual count is, and how many injured, when they start hearing the names, friends who have been injured in this. so the after effects of this is almost as catastrophic as the event itself. >> let me talk about specifically his handling, we know so little about him, approximately 18, may have been a former student at this school. we saw him be brought out of the police car and then be photographed. we then know there was an interim step, he was placed in an ambulance before these pictures airing on the left-hand side, apparently stripped of his

clothes and changed into a hospital gown. what would have have been for? >> several reasons, one that the idea of taking a photograph at the scene, multiple photographs probably, if there was some type of injury they want to basically show a chain of custody of him over time that the injuries were not inflicted post arrest. so the gathering of that type of evidence is an unfortunate reality today. transport to the hospital if there was some sort of injury, we heard a report of an injury to the leg, they were not too serious and shortly after arrival at the hospital, they were able to move him over to what i would say is broward county police headquarters. >> so everything becomes evidence as well? >> exactly. it you want to make sure that there's no mistreatment of him, no allegations of it. so the photographs at different times of him. those become important parts of the evidentiary chain.

>> we have the mayor of parkland, florida. ms. mayor, have you learned any more numbers or information from the hospital? >> i do no it have any specific numbers but i have heard there are multiple fatalities. >> yeah, we keep hearing the same thing and i know you want to put in a good worth for whd you witnessed over there, which is all the people in your community who ran into danger today. >> we live in a community that is very family oriented, we're a very close knit community, we have people in our community who volunteer in the sports leagues, who volunteer to help others, the students do the same. it's an amazing community that we live in, which makings it so shocking for something like this to happen. and you know, we talk all the time about the wonderful people we have and about our first

spof responders, and today was one where we're incredibly grateful for their people. >> i have just been told, nbc news is using wording that as many as a dozen fatalities may exist there. tell us what you've learned about how this started. have you talked to any witnesses? did this guy approach this school with a long weapon alongside him? is he a former student, in fact? >> i have heard that he is a former student, i did speak to students as they came out, obviously, shocked and in tears. that he was shooting people inside and i don't know more than that. the police set up a prim neveri and i tried to be respectful of

that because they need to do their work. >> have you heard from your senators, have you heard from the white house? >> i have heard from senator nelson and our congressman ted deutsch, he is -- he was just at the school with us a couple of weeks ago speaking to the politics club. i have heard from him, he's absolutely wonderful, always reaching out to us. >> mayor, thank you very much. i appreciate your time on a horrible day in your community of parkland, florida. the sheriff is briefing the media right now, let's go to that. >> this afternoon i should say, 17 people confirmed dead, we know at least 14 to 18 more were injured and taken to the hospital. we have heard several fatalities, we have heard a few fatalities and now we have the sheriff of broward county telling us 17 people died. we don't know if they're students -- unfortunately our audio has failed here so we can't get the details on the

reports. >> reporter: that's just the worst possible scenario, we were talking about multiple fatalities, one is just too much but 17 is just devastating. >> send your child to school thinking this is the safest place they're going to be. one way in, one way out, there's security, yet somebody can get in and pull a gun and start shooting, and create this chaos, this massacre, 17 people. >> just to let you know what's clear already to most of our viewers, that is our anchor team at wtvj in miami, florida, our local coverage which we have depended on all day. you saw the sheriff briefing the media under a highway overpass and you heard the news from the announcement that just expels the air from your lungs, exactly the thing we heard from the anchor woman at wtvj and that is that figure, 17 dead in this

mass shooting at an enormous high school on the western edge of broward county. 3,000 plus students, a sprawling building, sprawling complex of buildings that has had the worst kind of violence visited upon it today. former nypd commissioner bill bratton is with us in the studio. commissioner, 17 dead on arrival is just a staggering number. >> both of us had the exact same reaction. the idea when you heard that number, you just step back, that makes it one of the worst mass shootings in schools in history in this country. >> i'm told we may have worked out audio at the press conference, let's try it again. >> reporter: was he a former student? >> he's 19 years old, he was born in 1998, he got expelled for disciplinary reasons, i

think he might have surfaced altat terra bella high school, we're still trying to confirm that. >> reporter: can you speak to the number of weapons he had? >> i don't know anything about the firearm at this point. he had countless magazines, multiple magazines and at this point, we believe he had one ar ar ar-15 rifle. >> can you speak to the fire alarm that was pulled? >> i know nothing about it. >> reporter: can you say anything about when he was taken to broward general north with injuries? >> i think he's left broward general north, i don't think any of his injuries were significant. he has arrived at the broward police department headquarters. it's going to be a long night for all of us, but on behalf of

my family please, just continue to pray for these victims and these families. >> reporter: do you have a quick timeline for when the first shot was fired? >> no. >> reporter: can you go over the number of fatalities? >> we have 17 confirmed victims, 12 victims, 12 victims within the building, two victims are outside, just outside the building. one victim is on the street at the corner of pine island and two folks, people lost their lives at the hospital. >> do you thi >> reporter: do you think this kid woke up this morning just hell bent on causing mass destruction at the school? >> i have no idea. [ inaudible ] >> it started outside and went inside. thank you.

17 fatalities. >> reporter: how many other injuries? >> at one point, i reported that there were 14 folks, 14 of our people that went to the hospital. two succumbed to their wounds, i don't know if that -- if more people were wounded or we're just finding out that more people went to the hospital, perhaps they weren't transported by us, perhaps their own families or friends transported them, but we will keep you updated. >> boy, tough news in any form. bill bratton, what does it mean to you to learn that the shooting started outside the structure, that most of the deceased, 12 out of 17 died inside the structure? >> i was struck by the comment, one way in, one way out. and it seems like this is a

secure building. rather than one with multiple entrances. and so this will be details that will come out over the next hours, certainly the diagrams of the building. but it sounds like a shooting in close confines, in the hallways, but where the two people found outside died as they fled, or did he shoot them on the way in? those will be the details they'll try to put together over the ensuing hours. >> and in the nomenclature of the nypd and in all your police life, would this go down to an emotionally disturbed person, aged 19? >> certainly we would think, emotionally disturbed, motivation is going to be very interesting to understand. going forward again to try to prevent these incidents is building a profile of this young

man, so behavior up to the event occurring, could it have been identified, addressed and prevented. and going forward in other locations around the country, using lessons learned from this, can we encourage people to be more assertive when they see something happening. there's also been a lot of talk about chatter on social media about an event that was going to occur at the school today. so i will be intrigued to learn more about that, as to what that was all about. >> since the dawn of social m t media, people have been saying we need to infiltrate it and get these messages out before harm can come to people. we're joined on the telephone by a teacher at the high school. melissa, how are you doing? what subject do you teach and how close were you? what happened? >> i'm doing okay. i just managed to get home. i teach newspaper, i teach

journalism and english and creative writing. and when this started i was on the opposite side of campus, a fire alarm went off and we went to evacuate like we're supposed to -- you know, like we're trained to do, and as we were making our way out of the building, security was telling us that it was a code red, and that meanings an active shooter. so we turned around and went back to the classroom. and then we went into the closet and i was in the closet with 19 students. we stayed in there and waited until the s.w.a.t. team came to get us. >> and how does that work for all of us who have watchedsadly many other school shootings, you huddled together, you did the right thing, you had responsibility over the students with you, they come in and identify themselves and you yell out so they know there's no bad

guys in the room, you yell out that you're hiding in the closet. >> well, we heard noise, and we didn't know what it was, so we, you know, stayed in the closet quiet. and then we heard movement in the room and then we heard them shout out that this is the police, is anyone in here and we sort of slowly opened the closet door and said that we were there. but my door's always locked so my door was locked so in order for someone to get in there, they should have a key. you know, they had us come out of the closet one at a time with our hands up. so they went through our building one classroom at a time, clearing them and having the other kids and teachers come into my room and then we ended up with over 150 students in my classroom and six teachers and we waited until they gave us more instructions and then we went to another location and then we were taken off campus.

>> did you have to surrender any belongings? we have seen so many people come out and have to put their backpacks and purses on a big pile. >> when we first came out of the school, we had all the kids put their bags in a pile and we told the kids they would get them back eventually, but after we had been out there for a few minutes, they allowed the kids to go back to the pile and get their belongings and they moved us off campus. >> were you too far away, i don't know the dimensions of the campus, other than the fact that there are over 3,000 students. were you cognizant of gunshots at all, were you cognizant of sirens after that? >> i didn't hear any gunshots because the building where this happened is on the other side of campus and our campus is really large. it's an open campus so there is a court, like there's a few courtyards and the buildings are sort of clustered around the

courtyards, and the 1200 building is on the north side of the school and i work on the south side of the school. but within a minute, two minutes of us going back in the classroom, we could hear the sirens, we could hear helicopters and, you know, i have colleagues at the school and we're friends and, you know, we texted and whatever. so we were texting each other to see if everyone was okay and one of them worked in the third floor of the freshman building and she was injured but she's okay. so we were just sort of, you know, communicating with each other, through text, just like the kids were reaching out to their friends, their siblings, their parents. >> as you talk to your teacher colleagues, 19-year-old nicholas cruz, former student, do you remember anything about him? >> i don't know anything about him, he wasn't one of my

students, i haven't taught him so i can't really speak to his character or his motivations. i know some of the kids that i was waiting with, once the information started to come out that they knew of him. so -- but i don't have any personal knowledge of him. >> we keep getting these glimmers that there was some threat on the web and some corner of the internet. were you cognizant of today being any different other than of course sadly, being v valentine's day? >> it was just a normal day, when in the past, there has been threats made on social meeta, and in -- media, and at our school when they're aware of those threats they take precautions and they investigate and take the precautions at school to make sure nothing happens so as far as i know we didn't have any idea this was coming.

the only thing i can say is that we change protocols a couple of months ago. we have a new sninassistant principal who has made a lot of changes and we reviewed what to do with the kids and i don't think, sadly, i don't think we could have been any more prepared than we already were, everybody followed their protocol with the locked doors, and the kids ran with the shots and they had done everything that we trained them do and i am hearing in the braackground how many fatalities there were. >> what's most difficult is knowing that your town and your school is going to be associated with this for a long time. >> yes. we will -- we'll let you go,

melissa, a teacher at the high school there in parkland, florida today. commissioner, this is the human angle, think of 17 families waiting for confirmation. >> a couple of thoughts. the term used to describe somebody like the perpetrator of today's murders, he's an organized offender. he's somebody who clearly organized this event. the idea of the weapon, the ammunition, some of the early reporting on his social media site appears to be somebody fascinated with guns and knives, maybe right leaning in terms of some of his political perspective. as we study these individuals more and more over time, they are all ultimately emotionally disturbed in different ways. so he fits some of the classic pattern of somebody who might be disorganized in his life, but in the commission of the crime, basically exhibits extreme

control in the midst of chaos that he's created. and he quite clearly planned to get away, he was arrested three-quarters of a mile away from the scene. so unlike some of these individuals who take their own life at the scene, he had a plan. a plan to leave and whatever he was intending to do once he left. but there's a lot more to learn about this young man and the point you were making about listening to that teacher's voice as the emotion, as he was talking normally and then as he started thinking about it and so tonight you've got a whole community down there, the families, all those students are going to get home tonight and start thinking about it. and the next several days that's going to be a community in extreme emotional distress. >> how does a 19-year-old not in the u.s. military become so gun proficient? how do they learn how to pop a clip on a weapon like this,

where do they get access? >> in america, it's so easy. and florida, i think is one of these states that pretty much almost anybody can go buy a gun, open carry. i don't think there are any restrictions on getting a gun, or it's deminimus. the idea of that type of weapon is so easy to shoot, that's one of the reasons why it's so popular. if it were to jam, rapid fire, he might not have the skill to disconnect. the number of rounds fired. we're going to have to see if he had one of those bump stocks or was he just doing the single action pull. but, you know, that number of deaths and clearly there's other people at the hospital and don't know their condition. but once again an american tragedy. >> an american tragedy.

tam tammy is at the scene, tammy, 17 dead. hey, tammy, anything you can add to our reporting? >> reporter: yeah, brian, you know i think the hardest thing for the people out here that live in this community, the parents that go to this school, the teachers here is that they have been training for that. they told me they actually have trained very recently for this. that is how these teachers knew to take these students immediately inside as soon as they heard gunshots, you can only imagine how much higher that number could have been if they had not been training for this. let me just give you a little bit more of an idea of what this scene is like out here, brian. i can tell you, they're still sweeping the school, that can go on for hours and hours, they have to make sure there's no bombs or anything in the school. just 15 minutes a s ago, we saw

parent come up and she still had not been reunited with her child. so we have parents that are still trying to find their children, their loved ones, still trying to piece together what is happening, and obviously there will be a long road ahead trying to figure out why this young man, why this 19-year-old did this, killing 17 people today, brian? >> tammy, why aren't children and their parents reunited so many hours -- we're coming up on 7:00 at night, obviously it's dark outside, what's been the holdup? >> take a lo >> reporter: take a look behind me, we have a very active scene, we have parents walking down here still trying to figure out how to get to their kids. you know that the police question the kids for some time. but some parents have come up to us and said we have not been able to get to our kids, whether the child does not have a cell

phone, whether the parent has not been able to get to the hotel where the kids have been taken, whether the child has not been released after being debriefed, there's any number of reasons. but we have several parents who say we still have not gotten to get to our kids and give hthem hug and talk to them. >> many parents know that their kids have made it and are in a safe place or holding room somewhere. >> reporter: we have spoken to some parents who have talked to their children over the phone. so you and i know this, we have covered plenty of school shootings in the past, and really, the probing, the questions are what's going to happen next. why did this young man do this? why did he come back to a school

that we now know he was expelled from last year for some sort of disciplinary reasons. so these are the answers people are going to be looking for in the coming days and coming weeks. >> tammy lightner describing a scene at a school that will forever be associated with this mass casualty event, this mass loss of life. we have isabella gomez, a teacher teac opportunity at the school. isabel isabella, what did you hear first? >> i was on the third floor and the fire alarm went off, and we all started running downstairs and we all thought it was a fire drill, but we were really confused because it was at the end of the day and we started going and we just started running down stairs and we're all running to the second floor, we were on the third floor in the staircase. i went to grab the door and i

just felt the shooting just pop, pop, pop, it would just not stop. we started running, everyone was screaming, started running upstairs. i was towards the end and we all started running and once i was running up stairs, i just heard the door open and they started shooting all around us. it was so, like, vivid, it was so close to my ear. i just started running and i heard the guy running, and as soon as i got to my room, we all trampled over each other and we all got in the room. i just heard people screaming, everyone was screaming outside of the doors, i didn't look back, i just stood there. >> okay my goodness, i'm so sorry you were so close to this. have you heard from all of your friends yet? >> when i got in the room, people were like are you okay?

he was behind me, i didn't know how close he was, i didn't know if he was going to grab me. i was just really confused. >> you've been texting with everyone, everyone in your peer group, everyone that was in the classroom you were in when the fire alarm went off is accounted for? >> everyone that was in my class is okay, we were all in there and we were all taking care of each other. i know that one of my friends, he was shot and i think he's in the hospital, but they couldn't hear from him for a while. >> do you know anyone who knows this guy, nicholas cruz, 19 years old, former student there? >> no idea. it's crazy. >> what class were you in? what were you doing when it happened? >> we were in study hall, on the third floor right by the staircase in my teacher ms. ashman's room. >> and you heard from all your

teachers? they're okay? do you know that? >> i saw a video that this teacher was dead on the floor with blood everywhere. but that was on the first floor, but i have no idea who it was, you could ochnly see her feet a the blood around her. >> how do you feel about going back? >> i really, i can't, i don't want to go into that building ever again, i just can't do it. >> how are you going to deal with that? you're totally bientitled to the emotions that you don't want to go back there. >> i don't think they're going to have school tomorrow. i don't know how they're going to have school tomorrow with all those bodies in there. i just wanted to get out of that school, i didn't want to look back. >> you've got people around you

if you want to talk and all of that? >> yeah, i do. >> all right, i'm sorry to have you go back through it, i'm sorry for the terrible day you've been through and what you had to witness, isabella gomez, sophomore at this high school that will now be referenced with this. these are two attending if phy at the hospital. igor medical doctor, trauma medical director. >> what you guys have been seeing today. >> sure. >> so good evening. first and foremost, we want to extend our condolences and sympathy for all the people, family members involved in the tragedy today. through our broward health system, woo received 17

patients. at broward health north, we received eight patients and one suspect. the suspect was treated and released in police custody. of our eight patients, we had two mortalities, three in critical condition, and three are stable. >> reporter: what condition was the suspect in? >> i cannot disclose that is. >> can you repeat again, i'm sorry, i think the first sentence you said, you said 17 patients at broward health north. >> no, no, systemwide in broward health, there was a total of 17 patients. nine here, seven broward general and one at coral springs. >> can you talk about what type of injuries you're seeing? how serious are these? >> of the eight patients that we had, not including the suspect, two mortalities, three in critical condition, three stable. >> reporter: what are you seeing? what kind of wounds? >> out of respect for the family

members, out of respect for our patients, we're not going to disclose that information. >> reporter: are these all gunshot wounds? >> yes, they are. they're all gunshot victims. >> reporter: so sometimes we see people that are trampled on their way out or sustain other sorts of sxwroirnz that's why we wanted to clarify that. so all eight victims here, those were all gunshot wounds, some sort of gunshot wound? >> that is correct. >> reporter: can you elaborate on the ages of the patients brought here? >> again, we can't talk about the age or of any information related to the patients out of respect to the families. >> reporter: can you talk about, i know you guys were in lockdown. can you describe for us, is this a mass dashlt incident? what was it like inside as these patients were coming here after the shooting. >> sure. so we work very closely with our

prehospital personnel, fire rescue, on scene in conjunction with broward sheriff's office, prehospital communicates information to us. we routinely run drills at our institution to be ready for instances like this. so we have a process in place ha gets initiated so there's calm, collected care that our patients receive. >> can you tell us anything about the fatalities? at least their ages? do you believe they're students, possibly people working at the school? >> we prefer not to comment on our patients in respect for our patients. >> can you talk about personally? seeing this sort of thing, i mean, just as human being outside of being doctors, treating these people who have come in here after experiencing if not the worst event of their lives and you know having the responsibility of treating these people and you know, insuring

the best outcome that they can have? how does that affect you all just as human beings? >> well, we does this every day. what we saw today, we have penetrating trauma, nonpenetrating trauma. we're a level two trauma center. that's what we do every day. fortunately for everybody, we were located very close to the high school where this shooting happened. so fortunately for everybody, they brought the patients to our hospital and we were able to do a grood job good job to do the right thing. >> the suspect was brought here. i know you capital say much about his medical condition or whatever. but for a lot of people who are at home, they might be surprised the suspect was being brought here. how do you kick empty hippocratic oath and do your job knowing what this guy is accuses of doing inning. > every patient that comes in gets treated as a patient. we take care of them medically. that's what we do.

>> reporter: was there any particular reason why he was brought to this facility versus one of your other falls? >> because of the location. they have to go to the nearest trauma facility and we were the nearest trauma facility into is this the biggest mass casualty you can remember? >> for our hospital, yes. >> are you expecting more victims. >> we cannot comment on that. >> can you tell us if it was large caliber, spaul caliber. >> know, we can't comment. >> do you know the update for the patients at the other hospitals? >> not right now the. >> of the patients still here, will any be released tonight? >> no. >> are any of them still in surgery. >> we still have three patients in the operating rooms right now. they're in stable condition. >> did all of them undergo some kind of surgery? >> no can you describe those not as serious injuries what their demeanor was like? i know it's obvious, but can you

describe it for us. >> i prefer not to comment on a specific patient's demeanor. but as a human being, you can imagine that they would be in shock or you know, be emotional about the whole situation. >> reporter: can you describe, you got a call of mass casualty coming in. >> pardon me. >> we work closely with our prehospital personnel and set that up. >> how many -- >> one more question. >> can you walk through what's next for these patients, specifically the three critical and their families in terms of services? understand chaplains are now here. >> they're going to have successful surgeries, they recover, they'll go home. >> thanks very much. >> thank you. >> so the hospital spokesman behind the doctors decide that

would be enough. there's a degree of frustration and you have to respect that the doctors feel they cannot violate the confidentiality of the patients who they've treated who have come in the door with some of them with grievous and some of them with later fatal gunshot wounds from this emotionally disturbed 19-year-old who decided today, valentine's day would be a good day to go back to his high school and open fire with a long gun. doug phillips is breaking news editor at "the florida sun sentinel." we are still going with that number from the sheriff's office. sadly 17 deceased. >> good evening, brian. yes, your information that you've been giving has been very accurate and very comprehensive. i could only add that we're collecting the stories of the

people who were at the scene, those who witnessed the incident and those hose have some insight, possible insight into what happened and why and certainly the investigation is going to proceed with the thousands of questions that i'm sure that you understand what they would be. >> just looking at some of your print photography as you speak, our viewers will notice these are new i thinks to us. the parents under the overpass of the highway coming around on the cops, i don't know how the cops kept those, and parents away, and i don't know how you control people who want to be reunited with their kids. what do we know about this 19-year-old? what's his name, nikolaus cruz? >> he seems by anecdotal informationing to have a history with the school. perhaps having been a known quantity as somebody who could

cause trouble before the sheriff scott israel how heard during his news conference was saying their investigators are going to dig down into his social media accounts. what they've been able to see so far as far as hip, his weaponry and the threats he might pose, the sheriff termed it as very, very disturbing. > thank you very much for being with us. we realize you guys are full up on work tonight as you're putting together profiles of the living and the dead at this florida high school. we really appreciate you joining us from the offices of the florida sun sentinel. we've seen some of their still photography. these are the pictures from earlier. this is our suspect arrested, cuffed, photographed, taken apparently to an ambulance where he was disrobed. his clothing, of course, now becomes part of the evidence. we're told he had some kind of a minor injury. he was put in a hospital gown, walked from that sheriff's

vehicle noing what we believe was a medical facility after his initial booking. but there you have it, again, a 1-year-old man who thought today would be a good day to open fire on high school students and teachers at this high school in florida. the 7:00 p.m. eastern time hour has arrived which means it's time for us to toss to chris matthews in washington and chris, i've been thinking today about places like columbine and places like newtown and now parkland. great places to live but these names will always be associated with tragedy and that city you're in, washington, if but match it against public opinion polls of their constituents, lawmakers in that city are failing american people every day. >> thank you so much, brian. that is the question so much about american exceptionalism is wonderful. how different we are from the rest of the world is wonderful. the country of opportunity