Virginia Beach Mass Shooting Leaves 12 Dead, 4 Injured; 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Weigh in on the Virginia Beach Tragedy
DAN HANSEN, CITY MANAGER OF VIRGINIA BEACH: We want you to know who they were, so in the days and weeks to come, you will learn what they meant to all of us, to their families, to their friends, and to their coworkers. They leave a void that we will never be able to fill.</s>FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: And these are the faces of that we focus on. Eleven of these 12 were dedicated employees murdered at their workplace. They have years and years of service to their community. One was a contractor coming in for a permit. President Trump is offering his condolences to the victims of the shooting. He tweeted earlier that he spoke to Governor Ralph Northam about this shooting and offering federal resources to aid in the investigation. Let's check in now with CNN's Brian Todd. You were earlier at the press conference and the city manager was there, the police chief. They are heartbroken. This is so personal because these public servants were their colleagues, family and friends.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Colleagues, family and friends Fredricka and what's interesting is if you look at this Tide Water area of Virginia it's essentially four cities and together the four cities being Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake and Williamsburg if put that in there, it's the equivalent of a large metropolitan area but each individual town is small enough so that something like this does hit home in that way. They all know nobody. We spoke to the Mayor of Virginia Beach, Bobby Dyer, a short time ago and he talked about losing his personal friend Herbert Snelling, nicknamed Bert, who was the contractor who just happened to be here getting -- renewing that license and renewing that permit when he was killed. Take a listen to what the mayor had to say about losing his friend.</s>BOBBY DYER, MAYOR OF VIRGINIA BEACH: ... a personal friend. He was -- he did a lot of carpentry work in my house. He was a contractor and he was in the building getting a permit and I found out about it on social media about midnight last night and it rocked my foundation.</s>TODD: That is Mayor Bobby Dyer talking about losing his friend Herbert "Bert" Snelling who was a contractor and known Bert Snelling for about five years. Bert Snelling had done some work on the mayor's home and he is just heartbroken that he has lost his friend and he knew, of course, many who worked in that building Fredricka, as you would imagine. He's the mayor of this town. He knows so many people and for him you can see it in his face and hear it in his voice. He is really having a tough time pros processing this. We have to just quickly talk about again what we learned about kind of what happened in a possible motive. Police still not able to tell us what the motive was, whether this man had made threats to his fellow employees, whether he had had any conflicts with those fellow employees. We hope to learn a little bit more about that later.</s>WHITFIELD: Not further defining what does disgruntled worker mean, that's just kind of the blanket.</s>TODD: Right, exactly.</s>WHITFIELD: You know just to give people some perspective here we are on what is a campus of more than 20 buildings, municipal buildings. Building 2 is the one directly behind us which is where that shooting took place. We are still waiting for details from authorities about exactly how everything played out. You see the police tape. That constitutes this is still a working crime scene. How much of the activity took place outside and how much of it inside. I do recall hearing from the police chief and mayor talking about this is a public building.</s>TODD: Yes.</s>WHITFIELD: And while this gunman had a badge and employees have their IDs that allow them to be in all of these buildings, these are public building, this is for the public. So entry, for citizens, it's open.</s>TODD: And you do find yourself asking what about all of those rules was he aware of? He probably had a real knowledge of those rules and of, you know, what people enforce and don't enforce here and the layout of the building, of course. He knew it very, very well. Luckily the police also knew it and they were able to intercept him through the sound of gunfire getting up there and intercepting him. But carnage on three floors, he left victims on three floors. He knew new of the building to get to that many people that quickly.</s>WHITFIELD: This is a public works building.</s>TODD: That's right.</s>WHITFIELD: Also on this campus you have court, you've got public school system, fire, police, I mean it's all right here. This does constitute kind of like downtown, you know, city life without it being such because it really is very kind of suburban and very neighborhood like. brain Todd, thank you very much. We will check back with you. Appreciate it.</s>WHITFIELD: All right so for the workers in the city building behind me when the shooting started, the minutes surely felt like hours. So many today are just thankful to be alive. They are sharing more about those terrifying moments when they first realized that there was a shooting under way.</s>MEGAN BANTON, WITNESS: We were all just terrified. We almost kind of felt like it wasn't real that we were in a dream. You know you hear this all the time on the news but you don't think it's ever going to happen to you and then when it actually happens, it's just - it was like an out of body experience and you're just terrified because all you can hear are the gunshots.</s>EDWARD WEEDEN, WITNESS: We heard this sound out on the stairs. We go through the corridor and there was a lady on the stairs unconscious, blood on the stairway. We didn't know what happened. When the other coworkers went upstairs to find out something else, she came back down saying get out of the building, some guy has a gun. She was shot and at that point we all left.</s>BANTON: We heard shooting. We heard shooting but we didn't think it was that close like in proximity of the building so I just thank God that they were able to alert us in time because if it had been 10 minutes more, we all would have been outside so that's what I'm grateful for today.</s>WHITFIELD: I want to bring in now Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Governor, thank you so much for being with me. I understand that you are near a hospital where people are being treated. What do you do with this information that we are hearing?</s>RALPH NORTHAM, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA: Yes.</s>WHITFIELD: Very sketchy, you know information in terms of details about what motivated this gunman. We know in detail 4 public servants are dead and their service to this community range, you know, from 11 months to 40 years.</s>NORTHAM: Yes. Yes. Thank you Fredricka. I'm at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital. I was able to come by and say hello and thank you to the caregivers here. I'm a physician. I served during Desert Storm taking care of wounded soldiers and taking care of children all my life and I just wanted to be here to thank the doctors, the nurses and the staff for just taking such wonderful care of these victims. Also was able to spend some time with the family and one of the patients so I wanted to be here to say thank you.</s>WHITFIELD: So Governor Northam, this is, yet another, horrible deadly shooting. This time, a workplace, you know? A public building and people are trying to figure out when does it end? Why does it happen in the first place? What are the answers that you need in order to figure out how to prevent, how to comfort, how to grapple with what just happened?</s>NORTHAM: Well, it's a horrific tragedy and these tragedies are becoming all too familiar, and so we as a society, certainly me as governor, our legislators, need to have a discussion on, you know, what causes these tragedies and what we can do collectively to keep this from happening again. But today, we are here for the families; 12 precious lives were lost yesterday. These were individuals that came to work yesterday morning for the City of Virginia Beach intending to go home to their families and that didn't happen. Now there is a tremendous void and we need to all work together to make sure we take care of these families and give them the support they need and certainly four individuals are being cared for in our local hospitals and we want to do everything we can to have a positive outcome for them.</s>WHITFIELD: And as a leader, you would rely, largely, on your own gut and your instincts. What does your gut, what does your instincts say should be done? What is the next step? I mean you said there should be a discussion. But discussions can...</s>NORTHAM: Absolutely.</s>WHITFIELD: ...sometimes lead to nothing or it can lead to something. But what is your gut and your instincts say needs to happen to address what is unfolding across America. Not just here at Virginia Beach; This is the latest example, but across the U.S. What does your gut say needs to be done?</s>NORTHAM: Well, Frederica, we lost 12 lives yesterday. If you look at the Commonwealth of Virginia, we lost over 900 lives the past year to gun violence and gun-related accidents. Again, actions speak much louder than words so I will make decisions in the upcoming days but we need to look at our laws. Are they safe? Do they keep people protected in the Commonwealth of Virginia? We have introduced legislation each year, Fredricka, for the last few years and it has been defeated but things like this continue to happen. We can't be desensitized to these tragedies and it's time for us to take action. As the leader of Virginia, as the governor, I plan to do that.</s>WHITFIELD: The president tweeted earlier federal assistance would be available, is being made available, and how will that assist your state and how will that assist Virginia Beach? What do you see in terms of your greatest need in which federal government could step in?</s>NORTHAM: Thank you. This is all hands on deck and I spoke with our president last night. He offered his condolences and full support at the national level. Obviously we are offering full support at the state level. We have local officials that have been on the job but just everybody is in this together. Again, it's a horrific tragedy and we want to make sure today to deal with these families and make sure that we help them through this horrific tragedy.</s>WHITFIELD: And Governor, describe your emotions. Are you feeling frustrated? Are you feeling pained by this? How does this hit you personally when you hear of a - and all we have for now is a 40-year- old disgruntled current worker who is armed, who comes into the workplace, you know, wrecks terror here -- brings terror and leaves in its wake 12 people who are dead.</s>NORTHAM: Frederica, we all grieve for these families. As a physician, there is nothing more difficult than dealing with the loss of a loved one so it does hit me personally. And also as the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we certainly don't want tragedies like this to define Virginia. We are a strong commonwealth. We are faithful people. We believe in working together and, together, we will get through this.</s>WHITFIELD: Governor Ralph Northam, thank you so much and of course our condolences going out to everyone impacted and affected. Still ahead, more on this horrific workplace shooting. Virginia Beach is just beginning to mourn this tragedy. We are back with more right after this.