Police:  3 Children, 1 Teacher Killed in Oregon Elementary School Shooting

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The stakes couldn't be higher. Join CNN's trusted journalist for Election Night in America. Coverage starts November 3rd at 5 on CNN. Or streaming live with an All Access subscription. Subscribe at cnn.com/allaccess.

Anderson Cooper (0:17)

Good evening from the newsroom. Tonight, it has happened again. Another school, another shooting. To many, it may feel like a sickening routine for the parents and siblings and families of the dead. It is the end of their lives as they knew it.

This time, it happened in Ben, Oregon, at a local elementary school. Four people killed, three of them children, and one adult, according to a source. Unclear at this point if the adult was a teacher or school employee. We're expecting to hear from authorities within the next half hour. The school began at Silver Rail Elementary School just before 1 p.m. local time.

SPEAKER_3 (0:52)

At about 12:59 p.m., dispatch received the first call reporting a shot fired into a car. At 1 p.m., our officers' dispatch toned out an alert, which alerts all of our officers that they need to respond to a critical scene. Our officers were on scene at approximately 1:02 p.m. Seconds later, we received word over the radio that the suspect in this incident was down. We received multiple 911 calls during this incident, just in those two minutes, reporting an active shooter in Silver Rail Elementary School.

At 1.02, as I said, our officers were on the scene, and moments later, the shooter had been shot and killed.

Anderson Cooper (1:46)

The Bend Police Department also said the shooter may have been killed by a bystander. It's unclear if that means a teacher or even a parent at this point. The shooter was a 16-year-old male, according to multiple law enforcement sources. The Bend Police Department says they evacuated every classroom and bussed students to Journey Church in Bend, which was turned into a reunification center for parents, where the 400 students were enrolled in the school, which is kindergarten through fifth grade. The FBI is on the scene tonight, along with local law enforcement, of course. According to FBI Director Cash Patel, who posted on social media, we will make every resource they need available. The superintendent of the school released a statement that read, We are stunned and heartbroken by this senseless tragedy. We extend our deepest sympathy to the families and to everyone affected by this violence. No words can adequately express the grief our community is experiencing. For more on the latest, I want to bring in CNN's Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, John Miller, who's here with me, CNN Law Enforcement Analyst, Jonathan Wackrow and Josh Sherard, who's a former police captain and civilian active shooter trainer.

John, what's the latest you're hearing from sources?

John Miller (2:52)

Well, we've learned that the shooter is a 16-year-old male. He's only been 16 for a couple of months based on his date of birth. What we don't know is what is his connection to that school. It's K through five. So even if he had gone there before, he would have been out of that school for five years depending on how you do the math.

Why was he there? What was the shooting about? These are all questions that were a little bit in the dark on right now. The other question is that weapon. As a 16-year-old, he couldn't legally possess it. Did it come from the home?

Did he get it from someplace else?

Anderson Cooper (3:27)

Do you know what kind of weapon it was at this point?

John Miller (3:29)

Don't know if it was a handgun or a rifle. We're awaiting this police news conference where we expect some of that to be filled in. What we do know is that while the FBI is providing one suite of resources, and we can get into that if you want, ATF will be there examining that weapon, getting the serial number, running that record to figure out where was it manufactured and where was it the last point of sale, likely at a gun store. And then they would have to go to that store, go into the paper records, and figure out who was that sale to.

As we have seen in Michigan and Georgia, juveniles who have committed active shooter massacres at schools with weapons that they obtained at the home, cases like that are now resulting in the prosecution of parents for negligence, for failure to secure the weapon, for giving kids access.

Anderson Cooper (4:24)

The spokesperson for the police were saying that the initial call was about shooting into a vehicle.

John Miller (4:31)

Right. Part of what we've been trying to piece together, pretty unsuccessfully is the 911 call is about shooting into a car. But other anecdotal reports we've had is that the shooter was shot by an adult teacher, parent, bystander inside the school. This may be key whether he was shooting at the car or the car just called 911 and said, there's someone shooting outside, we're in the car.