Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Rapid Response: My Firsthand Account with Two Active Shooters
Ever wondered what goes through the mind of a first responder during an active shooter situation? Join me as I recount the intense decisions and split-second reactions from my 21-year law enforcement career, offering a raw look at the complexity of these high-stakes incidents. Through vivid recollections of responses to shootings at a hospital and a high school, you'll gain an insider's perspective on the chaos, courage, and challenges that define these moments. We also touch on the haunting Halloween 2024 shooting at Vancouver Mall, examining the powerful role media plays in shaping public understanding of these tragedies.
Prepare to learn how pivotal events like the Columbine massacre completely transformed police response tactics, ushering in a new era of rapid intervention and life-saving strategies. Despite the difficulties in enforcing gun laws and the accountability challenges in different regions, the emphasis remains on swift action to neutralize threats. This episode doesn't shy away from discussing the psychological intricacies of active shooters, many of whom face a tragic end when confronted by law enforcement. Through past episodes and real-life stories, we reflect on the lasting impact these incidents have on everyone involved.
Listeners will hear about the emotional toll of delivering death notifications and the burden of investigating chaotic crime scenes. In reliving the harrowing details of a school shooting response, I highlight the critical importance of preparedness and the heroic efforts to ensure student safety amidst the turmoil. These firsthand stories aim not only to illuminate the vital role of law enforcement in protecting communities but also to stress the indispensable qualities of bravery and decisiveness for those on the front lines.
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Welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast. My name is Aaron, I'm your host and thank you so much for coming back for another week. So this week I'm going to talk about an experience that I had. We're going to talk about active shooters. We're going to talk about active shooting that recently occurred in the city of Vancouver, washington, on Halloween. But more so I want to talk about my experiences. You see, in my 21-year career of law enforcement, I responded to two separate active shooters, one at a hospital and one at a high school. So I have some firsthand experience as to what that looks like, what that response looks like, what the chaos looks like when you arrive on that scene and there's still somebody killing and taking shots. I have that experience. I can talk about it. There's some things I can talk about now that I'm not in law enforcement, where I'll share the good and the bad as to the way those investigations played out. I'm going to talk about some things that might not make people happy. They might not like what I have to say about them, but that's okay because I'm outside of it now and I can share my true thoughts and feelings. But first, this isn't the first time we've spoken about active shooters on the Murders to Music podcast, if you remember, back in episode 17, the title is From Lieutenant to Buffoon and actually that is our most downloaded episode ever and in that Scott Walden, a police officer at the time of this shooting, talks about the 2015 Umpqua shooting in Southern Oregon. He talks about his response as a detective and he talks about the impact that has had on his life and ultimately on his career. So if you guys haven't listened to that episode 17, go check it out. Like I said, it's our number one downloaded episode and a lot of that talks about not the goriness of it, but more the impact side that these types of cases has on somebody, not only in the moment, but the prolonged effects as well.
Speaker 1:Halloween of 2024. I'm not involved in this case. All I have on this case is what I'm hearing through media. So I want to just put that out there, that I'm not an expert on this case. But Halloween 2024 at the Vancouver mall in Vancouver, washington. The mall was crowded with trick-or-treaters, thousands of parents with their children in there, and at some point in the cafeteria section, somebody decided to turn their night into a living hell. It was what described as a black male adult wearing a Halloween mask of sorts. One media outlet reported as a clown mask, another one reported just as a Halloween style mask. Either way, that person opened, fired on a crowd of people in the cafeteria, leaving one person dead, two people injured and absolute chaos in the mall. The killer was able to flee and, as I know of it now, several days later, has still not been captured. But again, I'm not privileged to any information on the inside for this call, so I don't know where they're at All.
Speaker 1:I know is that experience that those people had and those police officers had in responding to that, that I do have an understanding and an idea as to what that is like. You see, in the aftermath of this, media can play a huge role in the success or the not success of these types of calls and in this case, in the Halloween attack, one person, one media outlet said that this was a targeted attack with no further threats, while the next one said the person's on the loose, armed and dangerous. So we really can't really hang our hat on what the media is saying about these cases, because the information they may get either one may be contrived out of their own thoughts, feelings or anecdotal information that they're seeing, observing, maybe hearing bits and pieces of conversation, versus a true media release released by a public information officer or PIO of the police department. Media can twist things. They can get information wrong, they can put out bad information, they can help or they can hurt. We experienced media in my cases and there's actually three cases that in my career that have been close and local to me. I responded to two of them. The third one is the Clackamas Mall shooting in Clackamas, oregon, and that I was working during that period of time but I did not respond to the actual shooting. So in a 21-year career, for just an average cop to have three active shooter situations within a response area, that is a lot.
Speaker 1:And if you look at the statistics across America and I'll pause by saying that you can make a statistic, say anything that you want, but the statistics are some of them say that there's been 445 mass shootings from January 1st of 2024 to September of 2024. And a mass shooting in that situation is described as a shooting where there's four or more people injured or killed. Another study by BBC shows that in America there was 385 shootings in that same time period, from September I'm sorry, from January 1st to September of 2024. But then you look at another report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government and it says that between 1966 and 2024, there's only been 441 mass shootings in the United States. Now we know that all those numbers can't be right. There's a vast difference. Rockefeller is saying there's been 441 in a 20, 40 year period, whatever that is and gun violence archives show there's been 445 just this year alone, between January 1 and September. So while you can't really put a lot of weight on the statistics side of things, I think we can all agree that there are way too many and that they're hitting way too close to home.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not going to be a gun control podcast. Okay, we're not going to get into the politics of gun control and who the best person is. I know we have an election right around the corner in a couple of days. By the time you hear this, the election's already happened. So we're not going to get into and there could be chaos in the streets, who knows, with more mass shootings. But we're not going to get into the politics of whether this is a gun control issue or not a gun control issue. But at the end of the day, the guns are out there and there's mass shootings going on, and it doesn't matter what color the gun is, what size the gun is Is it a rifle, is it a handgun, is it a revolver? These mass shootings happen all the time with a variety of different weapons that they're choosing to implement. There are other mass killings that happen with knives, so it's not the gun's fault, it's what we're doing in society and the people that are out there that are causing these problems, and you know we have.
Speaker 1:And again, it's not going to be a topic of gun laws. Or do we need more laws on the books, frankly, in 21 years of law enforcement? Or do we need more laws on the books, frankly, in 21 years of law enforcement, I see plenty of laws on the books that would hold people accountable for their actions. But when you live in or work in an environment like Multnomah County, where it's so liberal and does not hold people accountable for their actions, and you have that government in there that refuses to hold people accountable because their actions, and you have that government in there that refuses to hold people accountable because the jails are too full or whatever their excuses are, you have no idea how many people I've arrested for major gun crimes that literally get the cases dismissed, and they're solid gun crimes. They're solid gun charges, but they don't hold them accountable. So I don't think putting more gun laws on the books is necessarily going to solve all of our problems. Maybe we just hold people accountable for the ones that are already there.
Speaker 1:But I digress. So let's recap and say that, as you all know, statistics can show anything. So, at the end of the day, I think we can all agree that there are too many of these things going on too close to home that impact our lives directly. This is no longer something we see on the television. That happens on the other side of the nation, and there's no ripple effect or aftermath that hits us in our own backyard. This is now something that is occurring in our own backyard. This is now something that is occurring in our own backyard.
Speaker 1:I want to tell you about my experiences. Before we do that, let's talk about the shooting that absolutely changed the way law enforcement myself included responded or responds to active shooter situations, and that is the Columbine shooting in Colorado in 1999. It wasn't a shooting, it was a massacre. The Columbine massacre in 1999, you see, prior to that shooting, law enforcement. Well, in case you don't know about that shooting, within 13 minutes of the first 911 call, two shooters killed 12 students, one teacher, and injured 23 other people and then killed themselves. So within 13 minutes, that is the destruction and massacre that was done, carried out by two students. You see, prior to that shooting, law enforcement's approach to active shooters, because it wasn't something that we had really experienced, and unless you know it and understand it and have experienced it, then you may fall back on tactics of yesterday.
Speaker 1:The tactics of yesterday that were employed during the shooting was law enforcement arrives on scene, they secure a perimeter could be an inside perimeter, could be an outside perimeter or both Then they enter the building Once they've formed a team of officers. They have to wait for their team of skilled and qualified officers to arrive and then they slow clear the building room by room by room. That means when they step inside and they find a room with a locked door, they have to breach that door, they have to go in and clear that room and then move on to the next. This whole time, somewhere else in the building there could be shooting going on. This is the way of the old school mentality, thinking of law enforcement's response to an active shooter. Not only would they clear those buildings, one or those rooms, one at a time, but they would hold that ground and basically take up that land or that space and that would be a controlled or secured area where they knew that they had no active shooters, no threats, and if they had anybody in the way or victims, they could address them and deal with them.
Speaker 1:Well, the problem with that is, in the Columbine shooting, police did not enter the building. Swat didn't enter the building until 47 minutes after the original gunfire erupted. So that means it took 13 minutes for these two shooters to go in, kill 12 students, one teacher, injure 23 others and then kill themselves. 13 minutes is how long that took Within 13 minutes of the first report of gunfire. The police officers did not enter the building for 47 minutes. These kids were dead 34 minutes before the police entered the building. That is a problem and that is something that was highly scrutinized during the Columbine shooting and the building. That is a problem and that is something that was highly scrutinized during the Columbine shooting and the aftermath and as a result, it led the FBI to review this case and find out what we can do different and differently.
Speaker 1:Now law enforcement is trained for a rapid response approach, meaning when you arrive, you go in. When you arrive, you go in. You make entry into that building. You could be alone or you could be with one other person, whoever happens to be there, but your goal is to go to the report of gunfire. It is to run fast and hard to the sound of gunfire reports, shots screaming. You are literally running into the chaos that is in front of you. When you do that, here's what you're going to experience. You're going to experience the fire alarm going off. You're going to have thousands of people potentially running against you. You're going to be that salmon swimming upstream Say that four times fast that salmon swimming upstream to try to get to wherever the active threat is. When you get to that active threat, your goal is to eliminate the threat, decentralize the threat. If the threat dies as a result of that, then that is just the price of doing business. We're law enforcement. This is a contact sport. Don't be a dick with a gun killing people unless you want to pay the consequences for this.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll talk about the challenging and how often law enforcement challenges people here in a second in these situations, but at the end of the day, the net result is most of these people, when challenged, will kill themselves. They won't get killed by law enforcement. A lot of them, just like in the Columbine case, end up taking their own lives Because they're tough until they're challenged with a bigger and badder threat and then they can't face it. So they decide to do the easy, coward way out and that is to commit suicide. When I'm talking about law enforcement running to the sounds of these threats, these are the people that have families at home. They have kids. They woke up that morning and they chose to go to work to try to save somebody's life or to help somebody or to make the world a little bit better place.
Speaker 1:If you put yourself in their shoes for one minute and you're running down that hallway with thousands of kids running past you, in the air is the smell of gunpowder. You can hear the shots getting louder and louder the closer and closer you get to them. Coming from the cafeteria, you hear people screaming. You're stepping over people who have been shot and killed that are laying in the middle of the walkway and they're getting trampled by the thousands of others that run past them trying to save their own lives. These are the police officers that are out there every single day prepared to do this for you. These are the ones that are out there prepared to put their own lives at risk to hostage, innocent police suspect. That's your priority of lives. So that means the police officer is going to risk their lives for hostages, innocents and other police officers, and then finally, below that is the suspect. They're the ones that matter the least. So at the end of the day, if they die as a result, then that's the price of doing business.
Speaker 1:I want you to think about that the next time you see that police officer out on the street. Know that this is something they've been trained for. There's not a police officer in America today that has not been trained in this rapid response approach to an active threat. Each one of them go to work knowing that when that call comes out and in a moment you'll hear about the call coming out that I heard, that made me respond to the last one I was involved in but when that call comes out, they know this is what they're going in to face. 50% of the shootings out there are active when law enforcement arrives on the scene and it's actually greater or equal to 50%, meaning that when the law enforcement arrives, there's still an active threat happening. And every second that police officer stands outside, prepares, throws on an extra layer of vest, does this, does that text their family to tell them he loves them? Whatever it may be and I'm going to get to that in a second Whatever that may be is more time that people could be dying inside that building and your job is to go in there and put yourself between the bad guy and the good guy and eliminate that threat. But the more time that you stand outside hesitating at a door, trying to penetrate a building, drive your freaking car through that building. That's what's going to penetrate it. You got a big glass wall in your car. Drive it through the building, take the airbag, blast and then go inside and kick somebody's ass. That is what you're getting paid to do. Out of the active shooting that occurs when law enforcement arrive, it requires 75% of those shootings require the police to challenge the active shooter and at that point we find, statistically, that most of these active shooters kill themselves. Okay, the average active shooter is about 12 minutes, some of them over in five. Some of them are over in 17 or 20 minutes, but the average of the actual active shooter is about a 12-minute time span.
Speaker 1:We're going to come back to the Parkland shooting here in a second. Well, the Parkland shooting, actually, we'll talk about it now. So the Parkland shooting occurred on February 14th of 2018. That was the one in Florida, you guys might have heard about it Killed 17 people, injured 17 other. In Florida, you guys might have heard about it Killed 17 people, injured 17 other, and it sparked a widespread outcry of controversy for the police response to that. You see, there were in-house public safety officers or school resource officers at those schools, yet their response was not the rapid approach or the rapid response. Their approach to it was more of a delayed response which allowed more people to get killed and as a result I won't get into the details of it, but as a result, law enforcement was fired, resigned, there was civil penalties and all kinds of stuff that went along with that, and in that case, the Parkland shooter actually joined into the crowd of fleeing students and camouflaged himself into it and was able to get away and escape the building and he was caught sometime later, but he was able to get out through the chaos that ensued based on his actions. That's going to hit home here in a second.
Speaker 1:Let me talk about my two active shooter cases. So the first case that I experienced was in November, on November 26th of 2008. You see, that morning I was off duty, I was in my Honda Odyssey minivan and I had my son Keegan with me, keegan with me. My son Keegan at that time was two years old and he was in the back seat, in a car seat. And I pull up to an intersection in Saldatan, alaska, and when I did to my left, a guy pulled up and I'll remember his name is Luke. Luke pulled up to my left and he rolled down his window and Luke was frantic. You see, I'd been a police officer in this town for about six years. It's a small town. A lot of people knew me Good, bad or indifferent. I was known as a police officer and everybody knows everybody's cars. If you've lived in that small town, you know Johnny, you know Jimmy, you know Susan, you know what they drive, you know their patterns and it's just what you do in that small environment. When I pulled up to the intersection that day, luke was to my left. I rolled down my window. He's frantic. He rolls down his window and he says my wife is working at the hospital, she's in the ultrasound lab, she's pinned down under a desk and there's an active shooter.
Speaker 1:Well, I was about one mile or less away from the hospital where all of this was occurring. He caught me at the major intersection, right by the hospital. He was actually on his way to the hospital, saw me, saw my car, recognized me, pulled up alongside of me to give me the news. I was armed and I had been trained in this rapid response and there was no way that I was not going to take some kind of action. I asked Luke to follow me to the hospital. He followed me to the hospital. We stopped about a block away. I told him to take my car, take my kid, and I would give him a call or reunite later. So he was able to leave. I was able to make my way up to the hospital on foot. I was armed. I had a radio with me.
Speaker 1:In that day I was very gung-ho and I carried my police radio. I put out that I was at the hospital. There was an active shooter situation Because of frequencies and the channels that everybody spoke on. I wasn't privileged to all of the information for the responding units. So in that situation, while I'm there, I'm off duty, I may not be recognized by everybody that's going to be responding and I'm armed with a gun. So I need to be very, very careful. I'm putting myself into a situation where if I get challenged by law enforcement, I need to comply. Telling them I'm a police officer might not work and might get me killed. So I can hear the sirens coming.
Speaker 1:As I approach, I can hear gunshots coming from inside the hospital and my plan I don't see any other law enforcement around at this point. So my plan is I'm going in through the front doors, I'm in plain clothes, I don't look like a cop and I'm going to go in and I'm going to go find that threat and eliminate them. As I'm approaching the front of the hospital, there is a parking structure to my right and straight ahead into the left is the main entrance kind of a circle roundabout driveway of this hospital. And I'm passing the parking structure, the shots are getting louder, I can hear them. And about'm passing the parking structure, the shots are getting louder, I can hear them, and about that time I see marked Alaska State Trooper units coming into the driveway and they're going to be going towards that front door. I can hear on the radio that somewhere in the building a Soldotna police officer has arrived and they're inside the building and they're reporting gunshots. They report they can smell gunpowder from the shots and they're seeing 223 rifle casings on the floor, expelled rifle casings. So during that situation, when I see the state troopers coming, I back off and I find a perimeter position because they're going to be the ones that are going in.
Speaker 1:Well, about the time they pull up is about the time the shooter steps out of the front door. The shooter's armed with a rifle and a handgun and he comes out the front door and he's immediately challenged by law enforcement. He comes out the front door and he's immediately challenged by law enforcement and there's law enforcement. They get out of their cars. Some of them flank to the left and the right, so they're triangulated on this suspect who's standing outside the front doors.
Speaker 1:At this point we know because we've got reports from inside the building that there's at least one dead and one other shot. So the suspect is standing there and he's got a rifle and he's pulling the trigger on the rifle and the rifle is not working. There's obviously a malfunction with this rifle. So he discards the rifle, lays it, throws it down onto the ground and then the suspect comes out. He's not compliant with law enforcement. He is waving a gun around at law enforcement, at civilians, and he is noncompliant. He is not dropping the gun, he is completely ignoring everything they're saying.
Speaker 1:And in my mind I'm expecting him to get shot at any moment, but it doesn't happen. But it doesn't happen. Instead, he drops to his knees and at that point he pulls a magazine out of his gun. He pulls out a handful of bullets and he starts loading this magazine with multiple bullets. That is significant, because if you're planning on just shooting yourself, you don't need multiple bullets. If you're planning on continuing your hate and discontent and killing others, you need multiple bullets. So in my mind, the moment that I see him loading multiple bullets is the time that I would either one rush him because he doesn't have an operating firearm, or I would go ahead and shoot him. Either one of those would work, but neither of those occurred. And as I'm looking down range, I see the troopers who were involved. I know them personally. I know that they have good judgment skills, yet they're not doing what I think they should be doing. So I don't really know what's going on.
Speaker 1:So then a bad guy loads his gun, he chambers around and he shoots around into the asphalt a confirmation round, bang, the gun goes off. Now he stands up and he's waving the gun around again. So here we go. Now he starts walking down the driveway towards me. So he's walking down the driveway towards me and as he gets almost to me we're probably 25 yards away he turns and he starts making his way across the grass lawn towards a residential area and a Mormon church. As he's walking across the lawn towards the Mormon church, it's a circular driveway, so he drops down off the lawn, which is the median of the circular driveway, back up onto the grass. The whole time they're giving him commands. His name's Joseph, do not walk towards the Mormon church, do not go that direction. Well, in Joseph's mind he's like huh, that's what they want, that's what they don't want me to do, so that's what I'm going to do. So Joseph makes a beeline towards the Mormon church and a battery of shots ring out. Joseph falls to the ground and Joseph is pronounced dead at the scene. Joseph.
Speaker 1:During a later autopsy, the medical examiner came back and said that Joseph died as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I'm not saying that they're lying, but I'm saying that I was there and there was a large burst of gunshots that hit Joseph. I watched it occur and I didn't see Joseph raise a gun to his chest. But they said that he was shot in the chest with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And just so you guys know, the way they can tell, that is if there is a close range gunshot, gunpowder and other debris comes out of that barrel at the same velocity and very hot in nature as the bullet does. So if you were to hold a gun up to somebody's skin and pull the trigger, you would have the gun shot wound and then you would have what looks like it's called stippling but it looks like um, a black blast pattern on their skin and that's from those other gunpowder, uh, pieces of metal, barrel shavings, that type of stuff that comes out very hot and it sears the skin. So that's how you can tell if the gunshot is a close range or far away. And in this case they said they had a single gunshot wound that was close range to his chest and that was the lethal round.
Speaker 1:What I didn't know about that day is that day was the day that they were pinning badges onto a lot of new uh police or Alaska state trooper sergeants and they had all the command staff in town. So on that scene was a lot of the Alaska state trooper command staff, I believe. When the shooter came out of the building he started delivering rounds and shooting at that first Alaska State Trooper car and that car took some hits on it. That car had the head of the Alaska State Troopers in it. So I don't know if their delayed response was because they had so much not scrutiny but at least oversight, and brass of the Alaska State Troopers there and on the flip side, maybe the brass of the Alaska State Troopers and I know a lot of these guys and they don't make a more badass group of individuals than old school Alaska State Troopers. Those guys are freaking, phenomenal. But you know, maybe there was a delay in reaction time because of the audience that was there. Either way, at the end of the day one person was dead besides the shooter. The shooter was dead, so two deaths in total, and then one other person was injured inside the hospital and that was the first active shooter case that I ever went on.
Speaker 1:The second one was June 10th of 2014. This one, that morning, it was about 745, eight o'clock in the morning and I'm getting ready to go to the courthouse and I stand up for my cubicle and in the desk behind me was my partner, marciano, and I think Marciano, I said man, I said something, something major is going to to happen today. I can just feel it, it's in the air and he's like man. I hope not. And I took off. I had to go to court and, as I left the building about 10 minutes later, I'm about 10 minutes down the freeway and a radio call comes out that there's shots fired reported at the Reynolds High School. The Reynolds High School is in our service area and the officer whose dispatch questioned it, he said repeat that she's like report of shots fired in the gymnasium at the Reynolds High School. Well, at that point you can never forget that feeling, that the pit in your chest, when you're like holy shit, this is it. I mean, this is happening again.
Speaker 1:So I'm in a detective car and I can't turn around on the freeway right there because they have medians. So I had to go a long way, a couple of miles before I could hit a turnaround point and come back. But I'm driving fast, I hit my lights and sirens. My lights and sirens work for about 15 seconds and then it blows some kind of fuse. So I have no lights and sirens. I'm in a Ford Taurus, I believe, or something like that Focus, I don't know and so I'm hauling ass on the freeway, I'm flashing my lights, I'm honking my horn, I get turned around. Now I'm headed back towards the high school.
Speaker 1:I'm about 10 minutes out from the high school at this point. In those 10 minutes, there are a million things going through my mind. One I want to make sure that I have the right approach. I want to be listening to that radio traffic to try to figure out what is the safe way into this for the responding officers that are already there. Where is the exposed threat? I'm a detective. I'm not wearing a vest. Do I slow down and get the vest out of my trunk before I make entry into this building? No, I don't. I just go. Because of those delayed seconds of trying to protect my life, somebody else could be dying. So you just go in and you just push forward and deal with it.
Speaker 1:I remember those cars could not get out of my way fast enough. I'm driving I don't want to say beyond my skill set, but you're assed up, your adrenaline is going. You know that there are people actively dying and the sooner you get there, the sooner you can stop those threats. I remember thinking all I've got is my handgun. I don't have a rifle. They took the rifle away when I came into detectives so therefore I got to go in with this handgun, but we'll go in and do what we got to do. Handgun is an inferior weapon to a rifle, but it is what it is. I remember thinking about how this day is going to change the rest of everyone's lives, who's involved in it, from the victims to the teachers, to the students, to the police officers that respond and the impact that is going to have for the rest of people's lives. And I'm going to be in the middle of this and if I get there quick enough, I may be an active part in stopping this threat. All the stuff that we've trained for is now on the line and I can just hope that my coworkers who are arriving with me and before me are in the same mindset and are ready to go in and take action.
Speaker 1:When I arrive as prior to my arrival on scene, I hear other units say okay, you know, other units have arrived, they're getting ready to make entry. There's, I think, one person reported a shot fired or something. So they're going to be going in. And that's what I'm hearing on the radio. Now, the way the school is set up, the school is a couple hundred yards off of the main thoroughfare for the approach to the school. Well, I come in on the main thoroughfare, I don't see a large police presence at all. In fact I don't remember seeing any other police cars. But I know where the school is and I can hear the radio traffic that they've got people at the school getting ready to make entry.
Speaker 1:And as I'm approaching, I see thousands of kids running from the school and they're just sheer chaos. They're in a big line but nobody's leading them, nobody's telling them where to go. They're just running away from the school. So I take charge of that group. I start directing them. There's a Mormon church again another Mormon church. I'm just making that connection. Right now there's another Mormon church there. I direct them to the side and behind that Mormon church. So we have some hard cover in case there's any gunshots or rounds fired. Nobody's getting hit and I'm dealing with several thousand kids.
Speaker 1:I asked for some more help. I get some more police officers there and we start a. This is something that they're not necessarily trained for, but it just kind of comes natural. So we start all these kids in one area and we're going to search them all. So we get enough cops there, we start searching these kids. Why are we searching them? We don't know if there's a second shooter. We don't know if there's any improvised explosive devices. We don't know who these kids are, who the good guys, who the bad guys are. They're all screaming. Some of them have just witnessed murder. Some of them have been shot at all screaming. Some of them have just witnessed murder. Some of them have been shot at. Some of them might be the shooter. So we're talking to these kids and this is not a situation where we're going to interview these kids and we're not necessarily friendly to them.
Speaker 1:Everybody get your hands up. Everybody's treated as a threat. Everybody get your hands up. You know, keep your hands on top of your head. Don't move your hands. Anybody that's moving their hands off the top of their head is going to get some serious attention from us. So we get them up, we stand them up, we pat them down, we search them and we move them to a second area. So at least they've been. They've been scanned once and searched once. Now they're to a second area. During this searching process, one of the police officers with me is searching somebody and finds a gun on them. So he screams gun. So all of a sudden we're holding down lethal cover on everybody else and now they're dealing with this threat. Who's holding a gun? Some kid's got a gun, so we get the gun off of him, get this kid in handcuffs, put him into the police car and we continue our search. We don't know if he's a shooter, if he's an active threat, we don't know what his role is, but he's now in custody. We get everybody else patted down and we're get them staged.
Speaker 1:At about that time a lady comes up to me wanting to know where her son is, and I said you know my son, emilio. I need to know where he is, I need to find him. And there's still hundreds of kids running from the school and there's thousands of kids that I'm dealing with and I'm like, ma'am, I have no idea. You're welcome to hang out, but hang out over there for me and just wait for him. I'm sure he'll come out. So she goes away. She comes back a couple minutes later. She's like hey, my son Emilio, he's here, I know. Yeah, I can't find him and I'm like you need to go wait over there. I'll be with you in a minute. Your son is probably going to come out. When he does, we'll reunite you guys. But right now I need you to obey and go, stand over there and stay out of the way. You're causing a, you're causing a distraction. So she went away and, uh, we get all the kids out, we get them all searched. The next step is reunification, meaning we load all the kids out, we get them all searched. The next step is reunification, meaning we load all these kids onto buses and we want to bring them over to a reunification site, which happened to be at a Fred Meyer miles away, and that's where they can meet up with parents. So we load all these kids up and all the kids were out of the school, they're all accounted for and they all get on buses. And this lady's still standing there and now we've moved her inside the Mormon church so she can have a place to stay.
Speaker 1:And I get the notification that Emilio is the deceased child inside that the killer killed. So there's one person dead on this scene. Besides the shooter, there's one person been injured and Emilio, her son, is the dead kid. So I ended up having to go and do the death notification to her and all I can say is mom knew. There's something about that mother's instinct. There's thousands of kids, there is sheer chaos. I haven't met a parent that wasn't worried or wouldn't be worried in that situation. Her mother, her maternal instinct, knew that it was her son that had been killed inside. And while I had a job to do to Reduce chaos and take order of that scene, I really felt like a dick in the way that I treated her hindsight being 20-20. Couldn't do anything about it. I still had a job to do to preserve other people's lives, but I felt rough. So I ended up doing the death notification with her and a moment I'll never forget. And it sucked. So we got through that and now it's time to continue on with this case and try to figure out what all the pieces of this puzzle are. So, in that situation, all the pieces of this puzzle are.
Speaker 1:So in that situation, by this time we got a huge police presence on the scene. We've got police officers from every police department in the metropolitan area. We've got police departments that came across the bridge from Washington State. We've got Parks and Rec. Anybody with a badge and maybe with or without a gun showed up because they wanted to help. We had so many police officers there we had to literally send people away. I would say hundreds, if not a thousand police officers on this scene. We set up our mobile command unit. The East County Major Crimes Team took control of this scene, which is our major crimes team that I was a part of, and in this case, I actually became the search warrant writer on this.
Speaker 1:I enjoy writing search warrants, I enjoy putting them in front of the judge, and I think that I have a skill set that allows me to deduce the most important information and write a clear and succinct search warrant to get to where we needed to go. Now you got to remember we have this shooter. We don't know who he is. We got to identify him. We don't know that he didn't kill everybody in his house and then came to the school to do what he needed to do. We don't know if there's a second shooter. We don't know if there's any improvised explosive devices in the parking lot or that he's hit around the building. Do we have any secondary threats? These are all things that we need to think about. Some, all things that we need to think about, some of these things we need to get to with a search warrant. Some of these things we can do with an exigency to the search warrant or an exception to the search warrant.
Speaker 1:So we send people over to the house to clear his house. His house is fine. We ultimately don't find any other shooters. We don't find any stashes of guns, we don't find any improvised explosive devices and we're able just to work that scene, while we'll never really know what the purpose was of this shooting or what he was planning on carrying out. And I won't go into the details as to what we found, but we did find a journal that shed a little bit of light on it and let's just say that there was some dark, deviant, twisted thoughts that were going on.
Speaker 1:So during these two we're able to clear this up the kid with the gun ended up not being involved. The one in the parking lot we arrested. He ended up, hearing about the shooting, grabbed a gun to come over to the school to help his brother but he had recently graduated the kid with the gun. So he looked like a student and he just kind of fell in line with all the other students that were coming out and got caught up in the mix. So while he had a good intention kind of like me on that hospital scene you got good intentions. You need to know your role and where to be and what to do and not to do.
Speaker 1:So I was able to review some video from one of these two shootings and I won't tell you which one it is, but as a detective I was able to review some of these videos and I was able to see the police response and I can tell you that I was nothing short of disgusted by what I saw. I saw police officers that I respected, looked up to and thought would absolutely perform perilously in the face of danger, and in fact it was not the case. In fact, I saw them standing at the front door, hesitating. I saw them going back and forth to their car. I saw them on their phones texting loved ones. I saw them on their phones texting loved ones. I saw them distracted. I saw them with their mind off of the goal of eliminating this threat. All of this stuff was happening. Now those are the disgusting ones. There was also a handful that absolutely took charge and kicked ass, but I was absolutely saddened and disgusted by the way that some of my coworkers responded to one of these two scenes While there was an active shooter happening.
Speaker 1:They failed to go in, they failed to act, they failed to respond the way that they had been trained and I guess, in the moment of sheer chaos and danger, that is really what is going to determine what kind of person you're going to be. Where are you going to place yourselves on that priority of life scale of hostages, innocent police and suspect hips H-I-P-S. Are you willing to put yourself and put your life in danger? And in this case, I saw some people that I would not want backing me up for a shoplifting call, much less a shooting call. I was disgusted by them, the ones that showed up that kicked ass. You know who you were. You guys were absolutely amazing and you could come for me any day. You could respond to the call with my kids inside any day. I got all the faith in the world, in you. The other half, you guys, can stay home. You should find another job. It was very sad you brought disgrace to the police department. That I loved. That has been my experience with my active shooters Again. There's been three in my career that are within response range. I have responded to two of them. I've heard the shots, I've heard the screams, I've seen the blood. I have been there and done it and took active roles in both of these investigations roles in both of these investigations.
Speaker 1:Going back to the very top of this subject, on Halloween of this year there was a shooting at the mall just a couple miles from me, as there were thousands of people trick-or-treating and I don't understand what would bring somebody to do something so selfish and so cowardly as to dress up in a Halloween mask and take lives during a family event. The impact that you and I hope you're listening, you won't be, but I hope you are the impact that you had on all those people's lives and the effects you've had on them absolutely unimaginable. The effects you've had on law enforcement, frankly, the effects you've had on me and the people that responded to those calls with me, those are things we're going to remember our entire lives. Those are things that are going to create a short fuse, a short temper, a lack of tolerance from law enforcement. Those are the tiny little death by a thousand cuts that we experience in our career. It makes us who we are. It makes us go into a restaurant and put our back to the wall, into a corner, know where all the exits are, because these are the things we've experienced because of what you've done, you being the bad guy.
Speaker 1:We didn't. We weren't born this way. We don't like it. We weren't born this way. We don't like it. We don't like feeling this internal anxiety all the time, like the world is going to kill us. The fine line between prepared and paranoid. There's a fine line. We don't like writing that line all the time. That is what creates the PTSD and all the stuff we've spoke about in all the prior episodes. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much for coming out today checking it out. Please check out episode 17, from Lieutenant to Buffoon. Check out my first episode where it talks about what this podcast is all about. Well, ladies and gentlemen, again thank you so much for listening to this episode. This episode is just a little bit more really what it's like behind the scenes, a little bit of what it's like to be involved in these situations that I hope none of you ever have to experience. But until next time, that is the Murders to Music podcast.
