Chattanooga Shooting Leaves 3 dead, Several Injured 6/05/22 Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:00) All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming out. We just wanted to provide some updates on the incident from early, early, earlier this morning. I first want to make sure that I recognize all of the local agencies as well as we had the ATF come out and help us out and assist and support us in this incident, as you are well aware that this is a tragic incident that involved multiple people. And so we appreciate the support that we get from our local and federal partners. So I want to make sure that I get that said initially. Speaker 1: (00:32) But this morning at 2:42 in the morning, CPD units responded to the 2100 block of McCallie at the nearby nightclub on a report of a shooting. And once on the scene, they encountered multiple victims and began rendering aid as well as working to secure the scene. At this time, we can confirm 14 gunshot victims and three victims that were struck by vehicles that were attempting to flee the scene. Three fatalities have been confirmed, two of which are related to gunshot wounds and one of which is related to injuries sustained after being struck by a vehicle. Several victims remain in critical and condition. The victims are both male and female. 16 of them are adults and one is a juvenile. Speaker 1: (01:21) Right now as you can already assume that this is a very complex situation. We're trying to determine exactly what happened and what led up to this taking place. And at this time we do believe that it is an isolated incident specific to this occurrence last night. We do not believe that there's any ongoing public safety threat at all related outside of this occurrence this morning. We ask that anyone with information related to the incident, regardless of how small and insignificant you may think that it is, to please reach out to us. The homicide investigators can be reached at 423-643-5100, and you can also use our Atlas One app and submit a tip. Of course, all of this can be anonymous. Speaker 1: (02:09) This is once again a situation in which we find that we need help from the community to help us out with this. We cannot do this by ourselves and we're asking you for help. This is clearly a tragic event for the families involved and the victims. So at this time, I definitely want to make sure that we extend our condolences and our thoughts to the families and the victims that are experiencing this today. And once again, I want to thank all of our local and federal partners that are assisting us. And this is an ongoing investigation so there's not a lot of details other than that I can give at this time because I want to make sure that we follow through this investigation thoroughly and that we give it it's due diligence. So at this time, I'll take any questions if you have any. Speaker 2: (02:50) Is there an idea on perhaps maybe the number of shooters at this time? Speaker 1: (02:53) So right now, we are looking at there's going to be multiple shooters. We cannot confirm how many but there's definitely more than one shooter. So I don't want to confirm the exact amount, but there looks like there will be multiple shooters. Don't have the exact amount yet because we're still combing through evidence, looking at video, and evidence that was left on the scene. Speaker 3: (03:12) Are any other shooters in custody or? Speaker 1: (03:14) No. Speaker 2: (03:17) Any idea on the types of weapons that were used? Speaker 1: (03:19) Right now, that's still in the infancy stages of the investigation. We're looking through that as well. It's still early on so I want them to just take their time and make sure that they carry on with the detail that they need to do for something as significant as this. Speaker 3: (03:32) Will the investigation that's going on right now over at McCallie Street, will that pull away security from Riverbend? Speaker 1: (03:38) No, ma'am. We relieved all of the people that had to stay over a little bit this morning for that event. We should have them out. And if there are any less, it's going to be so insignificant. We really, really had a good success with the event so far so I believe that we will continue to have success with Riverbend today. I don't see that as all a safety measure at this point and I'm not concerned about deviating from the security plan that we've had thus far. Speaker 4: (04:10) The big shooting last weekend or this morning's shooting, how do we make sure to prevent this going forward? Speaker 1: (04:18) Well, would I ask for the public's health as well? If you live near or if observe, even if you're driving by establishments, just call 911 and say, "Hey, there's crowds." We want to make sure we monitor this street stunts with vehicles, those type of things. So all of these things hit social media and we do monitor that as much as we can, but just anonymous tips from the public letting us know there's something going on. Because these things escalate so quickly and swiftly as we see and these are the things that would help us if we can get those tips as well prior to so that we can mitigate this situation in the future. Speaker 4: (05:02) Is it too early to discuss on if there's gang connection with it? Speaker 1: (05:03) We don't know. We're looking through that as a lead as well. So we can't determine that yet because we're still in the beginning part of the investigation. Speaker 3: (05:10) Can you estimate how long that area is going to be blocked off? If we should let people know, "Hey, this is going to be blocked off all day. Avoid driving through that area." Speaker 1: (05:19) I wouldn't say all day, but I would safely say probably a couple of hours, yeah, good portion of the day. Speaker 2: (05:28) You mentioned that there were several people who were hit by vehicles as well. Is there any idea that those are the shooters vehicles? Were these people trying to get away at the time? Speaker 1: (05:36) I don't know at this point. It probably could be a combination of both. Really don't know at this point in time because there's just so much unpack with this investigation and we want to really just make sure before we put out too much information, that it's the actual facts of what happened before we actually say that. Speaker 4: (05:53) TO, do you have anything? Speaker 5: (05:58) Not on me. Speaker 4: (05:58) Okay. All right. One more. Speaker 3: (05:58) Will you guys be speaking later on today? Speaker 1: (06:00) So we will speak later. Me and the mayor will have a little bit more of a formal press conference later on this afternoon and that information will get released with the where and the when of that. If I have any updates at that time, I'll try to provide that to you. But for now that's pretty much all we have.