The Minneapolis Catholic School shooting resulted in 17 wounded and two children killed. An investigation continues for this. New details show the murderer, Robin Westman, put out a disturbing video on YouTube before the massacre happened. New York is getting a new Acelea train, and Penn Station is next up for a remodel, thanks to President Trump. Washington, DC's Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is admitting that Trump's plan to fight crime using the National Guard is working. Michael Sapraicone, a Retired NYPD First-grade detective and security expert, believes mental health is a significant topic to be discussed and diagnosed in people to analyze their thoughts. Zohran Mamdani is ahead in the polls in the NYC Mayoral race. Andrew Cuomo claims that if everyone else dropped out of the race, he could beat Mamdani. JC Polanco, Political analyst and University of Mount Saint Vincent Assistant Professor, shares his opinion with Mendte in the Morning regarding this thought process from Cuomo.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And good morning to you. Although it's beautiful here, it
is across the country. A pail has fallen over the country.
Because that's what leads off our Big three and the
Big Three. It has happened again, a mass shooting targeting
children from the Catholic school who were inside a church.
(00:23):
Two children died, seventeen injured.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I just ran under the pew and then I covered
my head. My friend Victor like saved me though, because
he laid on top of me.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
But he got hit.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
He's really brave and I hope he's good in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
The murderer identified as twenty three year old Robin Westman,
who identifies as a woman but was born Robert Westman
and legally changed his name five years ago. Coming up
in a minute, we'll play just a few seconds of
his sick video manifesto that he recorded just before the shooting.
There have been five shootings in the Bronx in a
(01:04):
twenty four hour span. The last thing we need now
is a soft on crime socialist as mayor. We need
a crime fighter.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
I'm dealing with what is becoming the number one issue, crime,
public safety, and quality of life. I'm the expert in
that field. These other three candidates have failed the public
in that regard.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And how about this In the nation's capital, the Democratic
mayor is now admitting that the federal involvement in fighting
crime has worked.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
The difference between this period, this twenty day period of
this federal surge and last year represents a eighty seven
percent reduction in carjackings in Washington, DC. We know that
when carjackings go down, when the use of gun goes down,
(01:52):
when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and
are safer.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
How about that it worked? And New York is getting
new trains and a new Penn station at record speed
thanks to Donald Trump. So what should the new station
be called?
Speaker 6 (02:12):
I imagine you're asking, is this going to be Trump's station?
I think that is a nice ring to it. But listen,
we're all working on building this project and get into
town and trying to have a conversation about name changes.
That's a conversation that could happen at some other point.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So now let's talk more about the shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It was a church filled with children from a Catholic school.
It was their first day of school and they were
there to celebrate that. Believe me, I went to Catholic
grade school. I've been through this before. I you know,
(02:50):
you go to church to start the school year all
of the time, and little did they know there was
going to be some coward, some sick that had who
knows what he had on his mind. He did leave
a video manifesto and he showed all the guns he
was going to use. And it's hard to even talk about,
(03:13):
but written on the guns were for the children, where
is your God now? And one said kill Donald Trump.
So this is a twenty three year old man with
some severe problems, severe mental health problems. And this is
(03:35):
a little bit of that manifesto, that video manifesto. It's
been taken down by authorities. It's being studied right now
by the FBI. But KTSP in Minneapolis was able to
get a portion of it to Marrow.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
I'm sorry to my family, but that's it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That's the only people.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
I'm sorry to those kids.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I'm not sorry to those kids. I'm not sorry to
those kids. There was something wrong with him. There was
something wrong with him for a long time, and nobody
saw it. We have a huge mental health problem in
this country and nobody addresses it. As a matter of fact,
the mental mentally ill were protected through laws that were
(04:31):
passed under It was a Hillary Clinton when she was senator,
pushed pushed a law to protect the privacy of the
mentally ill. And now they're out there and there's not
much they could be reported on them unless they show
themselves a danger. And this guy never had any run
(04:51):
ins with the law before, and so he created terror,
killing two children, injuring fourteen, injuring three adults. And man,
these kids are gonna have to live with this the
rest of their lives.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Is that church? And then I heard something like really low,
like I thought it was fireworks in the church. And
then when I saw the shooting, and I was like,
oh my gosh, I'm so scared. And so a teacher
lay me downstairs to like the like preschool classio.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And so I went there and one of the children
was saved, he says, by a friend who laid on
top of him.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
My friend got hit in the back.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Did you go to the hospital.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, you went to the hospital.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
What went through your mind when you saw that?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I was super scared for him. And there I was
like two seats away from this chain glass windows. They
were like the shots were like right next to me.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I love the police commissioner that was out there. I
just I thought he was the hero of this whole thing.
I did love how he just called Robert Westman constantly,
just called him the coward. Wouldn't call him anything else,
just a coward.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
The coward that shot these victims took his own life
in the rear of the church. That coward has been
identified as twenty three year old Robin Westman. No prior criminal.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
History, right, that's the problem. No prior criminal history. And
he had been planning this for a long time. He
had been buying guns and since he had no criminal history,
he could get guns pretty easily. And because you know,
and he'd obviously had mental health problems, but because that's private,
he can go out and then get as many guns
as he wanted. Somebody had to see that this kid
(06:47):
had a problem for a long time, for a long time.
This could have been much worse, could have been much
much worse. The teachers were amazing protecting these kids. Other kids,
as you heard a moment ago, were protecting other kids.
That should be celebrated.
Speaker 9 (07:07):
Within seconds of this situation beginning Our teachers were heroes.
Children were duck down. Adults were protecting children. Older children
are protecting younger children, And as we heard earlier, it
could have been significantly worse without their heroic action.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, forget the homicidal idiot that did this. The teachers
were heroes. Other kids were heroes. Neighbors who heard the
shooting and rushed to the place, they were heroes.
Speaker 10 (07:36):
The girl that was hit in the head, she was alured,
although it looked a lot we looked, didn't look like
a great injury by any means, and she just asked
me to continue to hold her hand, and she wanted
her mom, and I reassured her that I do everything
(07:57):
I could to get to her mom, but we needed
to stay there and wait for the police and the
ambulance to come.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
That was Pat Scalen who got there before the emergency workers.
He lived in a house nearby. He heard gunfire and
he ran to the gunfire. He ran to see if
he could help. He knew the gunfire was coming from
the church, he knew there were children involved, and even
though he didn't know if there was still an active shooter,
(08:26):
he didn't know what he was going to face. He
ran to that. There were heroes on this day, So
let's focus on them and the children and not this
scumbag who was allowed to just fester violence. Was a loner, family,
(08:51):
wasn't that much involved in his life. Obviously had problems.
But what did people do now when somebody has obvious
mental health promblems? What do people do now? They try
to avoid them, They don't try to help, and they
don't get involved. They isolate them, making them ticking time bombs.
(09:12):
We gotta we gotta change in this country. Now. Look,
I know many of your thoughts go immediately to what
about the guns. Uh, it's that's it's just not going
to change. And by the way, there are millions, millions
(09:38):
of legal gun owners in this country that would never
do something like this. It's not always the gun, it's
the it's the sickos that get them. And look, that's
not going to stop just because you get rid of
some assault rifles. They'll use something else. Somebody that wants
(09:58):
to create, somebody that wants to kill people is going
to find a way. It's happened throughout history. It happened
before there were any guns. It's the way it's always been.
When we come back in a little while. In about
an hour, we're going to talk about the long history
(10:20):
of people with mental illness committing these crimes. Well, as
they are still investigating this mass shooting up in Minneapolis
with two children dead and fifteen others wounded, they are
trying to piece together exactly what happened. They have a
lot of evidence, including a video manifesto. But what exactly
(10:44):
are they after now that the FBI is involved in
local police are involved. Let's go to a man that's
been involved in these type of investigations in the past,
Michael Sapracone who ran for US Senate. He is a
retired NYPD, the first grade detective, and of course he's
security expert, and he is more than willing when we
(11:05):
ask him to come on, and we really appreciate that. Michael.
Speaker 7 (11:08):
Good morning, Good morning, Larry, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So what is going on right now in the investigation?
Speaker 7 (11:15):
I guess they're just trying to tie up woes ends
and make sure that they have all the possible situations
now packed And basically this becomes a training time for us,
for the law enforcements around the country, so we can
see what mistakes may have been made what we can
do to prevent these type of situations that are happening.
You have to realize security evolves. These threats evolve every
(11:39):
single day. We've gone from basic situations to cyber threats, terrorism,
and mass shooting. So we need to be excuse me,
prepared for these things. We need to talk about public awareness,
We need to talk about see something, say something. Obviously,
this is a young person with many, many issues over
the course of their twenty some years. I mean, when
(12:00):
we look at this manifesto, we see his hatred for Catholics,
his hatred for Jews, his hatred for President Trump. Pretty
much he hates everyone. He spells out different plans of
what he might do and where he might do it.
So listen, we never want to blame parents. I have
five children. But we need to be aware of the
(12:21):
things that we see in front of us. And sometimes
we're afraid of that and we don't want to bring
that up because we think it'll just pass. But obviously,
with what's going on in this country with mass shootings
over the last ten years, going back almost thirteen years
ago to Sandy and then to Texas and to Florida,
we have a problem that we need to solve and
we need to work together, and we need to be
(12:42):
aware of and mental health is a big part of
that problem. Leary.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yes, I agree with you, and we were just talking
about it a moment ago that it seems like in
all of these school shootings, this is a little bit different.
But in all the school shootings, it was a student
that was isolated, that that didn't have friends, that didn't
feel like they were connected to the rest of society,
and all through his schooling, this guy was the same way.
(13:10):
He felt isolated, he felt different, and so he was
left to his own devices. I mean, he was accumulating guns, obviously,
he was putting together these videos obviously, and so he
had plans for a long time. And I guess the
big question is is society to blame, not just the parents,
(13:31):
but everybody, because when somebody's different, we just isolate him,
we don't pay attention to them. Maybe we should be
paying more attention to those on the outskirts of society
who put themselves there or we put them there.
Speaker 7 (13:45):
Well, I don't disagree, I mean, but how do we
do that? That's the question. How do we do that?
How do we make that better? I mean this person, actually,
I mean he he planned this step by step, may
not have planned the actual way he was going to
do it, but by the markings on the weapons, by
the markings on the AMMO, by what he put together.
He legally bought guns. And I'm not really sure if
(14:07):
he purchased the guns or they were purchased by a
family member. That still hasn't really come out. But he
methodically planned this, that he would do something like this,
And how does that not pop up somewhere though? How
do we not see that? How do we not see
what rage is inside of him? But we still need
to look at how do we defend against these things?
And if it's not helping them mentally disturbed, how do
(14:30):
we do it? From a security background, I think, Larry,
what's important about that is coordination. You know, you have schools.
I was a school board president of Long Island for
many years, and of course I had a security company.
Sometimes cost outweigh what we need to do, and people concern, well,
if we put on guards in the school, it's going
to cost a lot of money. We don't really have
(14:51):
that in a budget. How will parents handle that? Well?
I think it's very important to show presence in the school.
And I'm not saying you should put a unifor OW
police officer there because that's almost impossible in most cases.
The police department doesn't have the manpower to do that.
But we should hire trained professionals in playing clothes total
least identify people and stop people as they come into
(15:14):
the schools and walk around the perimeters. Now, yet to
this situation seems like a situation that if we had
had somebody on some type of patrol, there being a
security officer, that might have been avoided this. This person
put two by fours to block the doors. So this
is not something that happened within a second before the incident.
So that's a possibility. If we had someone walking around
(15:36):
that school, we may that may have deterred him at
that moment, okay, from doing what he did. If we
had had a car in a parking lot, maybe a
security officer or you know, retired police officer with somebody
there that may have done something different. This is a
beautiful day in Minnesota, the first week of school. Young
people go into a mass, and into a mass, we
(15:58):
need to we need to think about how we safeguard
our children and everybody from these terrorizing attacks. I mean,
the response time is terrific with ATF being there and
the FBI being there right away. But this whole situation
appeared to be done before anybody responded to this Clety.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, and it seems like it was being planned for
a while. And how does nobody nobody notice that or
even pay attention to this kid as he was having
problems growing up? I guess because of privacy laws and
hippo laws. Maybe that's what have to has to change
when they think somebody can be a danger to themselves
or to others. I'm not sure where we go from
(16:39):
here with this case. What can be done? It seems
like every time we talk about it I did. However, Michael,
you'd be interested in that, and maybe you already know
about it. That there is something coming out now and
as a matter of fact, it's going to be sold
the police departments across the country in the next week.
And there's one police department that already has it that
scrubs soci media twenty four hours a day looking for
(17:03):
threats that police should be aware of that might have
helped in this case.
Speaker 7 (17:08):
I think that's a great idea. I mean, and you
know that's something we don't have to put a police
officer on to monitor that, right. We can have trained
individuals who are good at it and AI or able
to look at these things and be able to point
this out to the local authorities and say, hey, we
see a problem in this area with this person or
this group. I think that's a big deal. We've probably
been monitoring those things for a long time, Larry in
(17:31):
one way or another, the FBI and Secret Service, but
I think it's time we start doing that at a
local level.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
That's exactly That's exactly the difference, Michael, Michael, he's telling
it to local police departments. That's exactly the difference. They
may have this nationally, but he has it. Thanks so much,
Michael for your time. Michael Sapraconne. Always appreciate your expertise.
He ran for the US Senate. You'll remember retired NYPD
first grade detective and security expert. Have a good day.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Thanks firing you too.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Everybody is now trying to make sense of what happened
in Minneapolis with a Well, he's a lunatic. He had
a problem, and that nobody noticed. He planned this, He
spragged about it. On a video and then he did
(18:22):
the unthinkable. He went to a church, fired through the
windows and killed two children, shot fourteen other children and
three adults. Right now, let's get the very latest on
all of this with Christianne Cordero. She is on the
ground in Minneapolis. ABC News reporter Christi, Anne, thank you
(18:46):
so much for taking some time to talk to us today.
Can you just give us the latest what's going on
there right now?
Speaker 11 (18:53):
For sure, Larry, So, it's great to be with you. Look,
it's a community in morning, and I think even though
I know the community well, I lived here for several years,
and you know, it's one of those things where every
community has its own little kind of special touch to it,
but it unfortunately is also something that is familiar and
somewhat universal. So there is a memorial setup near the church,
(19:15):
and now investigators are focusing on, you know, making sure
all of the victims recover while while of course conducting
their investigation into the suspect and how this happened.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
We got a lot of information right off the bat
about the shooter. Can you share some of that and
tell us what new may have come out in the
last twenty four hours.
Speaker 11 (19:37):
Sure, So, we know that the shooter was twenty three
years old, went by the name Robin Westman. You know,
we our team at ABC News found driver's license information
because we know that there has been some conflicting information
over who the shooter was. But it appears that Westman
was born as Robert Westman. And so that's kind of
(20:00):
where a lot of the varieties I guess in pronouns
and names kind of get thrown in. So the shooter
went to this church at eight thirty am yesterday or
just before it shot through some stained glass windows. School
had started three days prior, and in that process, you know,
(20:20):
carrying three weapons between a rifle of shotgun and another
one that I'm blinking on right now, but you know,
killed two students and two children eight and ten years old,
and then another seventeen were injured. Of the seventeen that
were injured, fourteen for children. So it's just terrible on
(20:42):
so many levels. The good news that we can draw
from it is that it appears that everyone who was
injured and was taken to the hospital is expected to survive.
And that's something that we also got from investigators very
early on. So that was, you know, a good under
under some terrible circumstances.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's going to be a long time before they completely
recover from this. I'm not talking physically, but I mean mentally.
And some of the people at the school and everybody
that was involved, the first responders, the whole community. I
get that. The thing that I think that the people
that are listening right now, and I've been talking with
them can't understand is that nobody paid attention to this guy,
(21:25):
that he was able to fly under the radar all
these times. I know he nevern't have an arrest record,
but right the things he said in the manifesto were disturbing.
Was there no one else in his life? Do we
know anything about him?
Speaker 11 (21:41):
Investigators are still looking for a motive, of course, and
that's the core of it. A lot of times when
you have these writings or these videos that are published
after the fact, there's a lot there, right, and so
it's kind of like searching through the haystack and trying
to find what the stream of consciousness was. We should
note and this has been why they were forwarded now
that Wesman died of a self inflicted gunshot wound. So
(22:03):
so sometimes when you know we've spoken with many different
kinds of law enforcement throughout the years and throughout many
different kinds of tragedies, and the preference is always, of
course to have a suspect living, because that is really
your your only way of really knowing why. But in
this case, what they're going to do is they're going
to comb through the writings and the video that was
(22:24):
taken down very quickly off of YouTube. Wesson's mother worked
at the school, so that's always kind of like a
starting point, if you will. And she's alive, so so
there's there's a lot to kind of go through and
and it will take time. I mean, I think that's
that's the human nature, right is just to immediately ask
(22:45):
why and I and I would hope for the family's
sake that they will get some closure in all of this,
and that always has to come with some kind of
answers and accountability.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, Christian, I'm going to ask a lot of questions
I think at this point that you may not have
the answers to. I've been in your position many times,
and I know it's very very early in all of this,
but do we know much about his family? Did he?
Did he? We keep hearing about the mother did he
have a father in his life?
Speaker 11 (23:13):
We know that he had a father, I'm not sure,
to be honest with you, how present like in his life,
right could mean many different things. But one of our
affiliates I know, did go to the father's house. They
didn't really, you know, get anything noteworthy that's worth reporting
out of that encounter. And I don't even know if
(23:35):
they encountered the father specifically as much as just knowing
where he lived. But so you know, the father lived
in Minnesota and the mother did as well. Of course,
from all of the pieces that we've been able to
kind of gather together, he went to school locally, perhaps
even had ties to Annunciation early on in his you know,
(23:56):
childhood education experience, but then didn't go there later on.
But there's so much you know, that fluid and that
we have to learn about it, so it's unclear who
all was. The one thing that you did point out,
and rightfully so, is that there was no you know,
prior criminal history, So that kind of gives investigators a
(24:17):
blank starting point, if you will.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And it seems like he didn't have many people in
his life. I know his mother was there, but I
mean the fact that he was making this manifesto, the
fact that he had all these guns, it just seems
like he was an outcast and he was by himself,
and he was planning this and nobody was there to
stop him. Christianne, thank you so much. Christianne Cordero, who
was in Minneapolis, ABC News reporter, thanks again.
Speaker 7 (24:41):
Christianne, thank you
And good morning to you. Although it's beautiful here, it
is across the country. A pail has fallen over the country.
Because that's what leads off our Big three and the
Big Three. It has happened again, a mass shooting targeting
children from the Catholic school who were inside a church.
(00:23):
Two children died, seventeen injured.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I just ran under the pew and then I covered
my head. My friend Victor like saved me though, because
he laid on top of me.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
But he got hit.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
He's really brave and I hope he's good in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
The murderer identified as twenty three year old Robin Westman,
who identifies as a woman but was born Robert Westman
and legally changed his name five years ago. Coming up
in a minute, we'll play just a few seconds of
his sick video manifesto that he recorded just before the shooting.
There have been five shootings in the Bronx in a
(01:04):
twenty four hour span. The last thing we need now
is a soft on crime socialist as mayor. We need
a crime fighter.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
I'm dealing with what is becoming the number one issue, crime,
public safety, and quality of life. I'm the expert in
that field. These other three candidates have failed the public
in that regard.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And how about this In the nation's capital, the Democratic
mayor is now admitting that the federal involvement in fighting
crime has worked.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
The difference between this period, this twenty day period of
this federal surge and last year represents a eighty seven
percent reduction in carjackings in Washington, DC. We know that
when carjackings go down, when the use of gun goes down,
(01:52):
when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and
are safer.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
How about that it worked? And New York is getting
new trains and a new Penn station at record speed
thanks to Donald Trump. So what should the new station
be called?
Speaker 6 (02:12):
I imagine you're asking, is this going to be Trump's station?
I think that is a nice ring to it. But listen,
we're all working on building this project and get into
town and trying to have a conversation about name changes.
That's a conversation that could happen at some other point.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So now let's talk more about the shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It was a church filled with children from a Catholic school.
It was their first day of school and they were
there to celebrate that. Believe me, I went to Catholic
grade school. I've been through this before. I you know,
(02:50):
you go to church to start the school year all
of the time, and little did they know there was
going to be some coward, some sick that had who
knows what he had on his mind. He did leave
a video manifesto and he showed all the guns he
was going to use. And it's hard to even talk about,
(03:13):
but written on the guns were for the children, where
is your God now? And one said kill Donald Trump.
So this is a twenty three year old man with
some severe problems, severe mental health problems. And this is
(03:35):
a little bit of that manifesto, that video manifesto. It's
been taken down by authorities. It's being studied right now
by the FBI. But KTSP in Minneapolis was able to
get a portion of it to Marrow.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
I'm sorry to my family, but that's it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That's the only people.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
I'm sorry to those kids.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I'm not sorry to those kids. I'm not sorry to
those kids. There was something wrong with him. There was
something wrong with him for a long time, and nobody
saw it. We have a huge mental health problem in
this country and nobody addresses it. As a matter of fact,
the mental mentally ill were protected through laws that were
(04:31):
passed under It was a Hillary Clinton when she was senator,
pushed pushed a law to protect the privacy of the
mentally ill. And now they're out there and there's not
much they could be reported on them unless they show
themselves a danger. And this guy never had any run
(04:51):
ins with the law before, and so he created terror,
killing two children, injuring fourteen, injuring three adults. And man,
these kids are gonna have to live with this the
rest of their lives.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Is that church? And then I heard something like really low,
like I thought it was fireworks in the church. And
then when I saw the shooting, and I was like,
oh my gosh, I'm so scared. And so a teacher
lay me downstairs to like the like preschool classio.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
And so I went there and one of the children
was saved, he says, by a friend who laid on
top of him.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
My friend got hit in the back.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Did you go to the hospital.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, you went to the hospital.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
What went through your mind when you saw that?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I was super scared for him. And there I was
like two seats away from this chain glass windows. They
were like the shots were like right next to me.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I love the police commissioner that was out there. I
just I thought he was the hero of this whole thing.
I did love how he just called Robert Westman constantly,
just called him the coward. Wouldn't call him anything else,
just a coward.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
The coward that shot these victims took his own life
in the rear of the church. That coward has been
identified as twenty three year old Robin Westman. No prior criminal.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
History, right, that's the problem. No prior criminal history. And
he had been planning this for a long time. He
had been buying guns and since he had no criminal history,
he could get guns pretty easily. And because you know,
and he'd obviously had mental health problems, but because that's private,
he can go out and then get as many guns
as he wanted. Somebody had to see that this kid
(06:47):
had a problem for a long time, for a long time.
This could have been much worse, could have been much
much worse. The teachers were amazing protecting these kids. Other kids,
as you heard a moment ago, were protecting other kids.
That should be celebrated.
Speaker 9 (07:07):
Within seconds of this situation beginning Our teachers were heroes.
Children were duck down. Adults were protecting children. Older children
are protecting younger children, And as we heard earlier, it
could have been significantly worse without their heroic action.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah, forget the homicidal idiot that did this. The teachers
were heroes. Other kids were heroes. Neighbors who heard the
shooting and rushed to the place, they were heroes.
Speaker 10 (07:36):
The girl that was hit in the head, she was alured,
although it looked a lot we looked, didn't look like
a great injury by any means, and she just asked
me to continue to hold her hand, and she wanted
her mom, and I reassured her that I do everything
(07:57):
I could to get to her mom, but we needed
to stay there and wait for the police and the
ambulance to come.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
That was Pat Scalen who got there before the emergency workers.
He lived in a house nearby. He heard gunfire and
he ran to the gunfire. He ran to see if
he could help. He knew the gunfire was coming from
the church, he knew there were children involved, and even
though he didn't know if there was still an active shooter,
(08:26):
he didn't know what he was going to face. He
ran to that. There were heroes on this day, So
let's focus on them and the children and not this
scumbag who was allowed to just fester violence. Was a loner, family,
(08:51):
wasn't that much involved in his life. Obviously had problems.
But what did people do now when somebody has obvious
mental health promblems? What do people do now? They try
to avoid them, They don't try to help, and they
don't get involved. They isolate them, making them ticking time bombs.
(09:12):
We gotta we gotta change in this country. Now. Look,
I know many of your thoughts go immediately to what
about the guns. Uh, it's that's it's just not going
to change. And by the way, there are millions, millions
(09:38):
of legal gun owners in this country that would never
do something like this. It's not always the gun, it's
the it's the sickos that get them. And look, that's
not going to stop just because you get rid of
some assault rifles. They'll use something else. Somebody that wants
(09:58):
to create, somebody that wants to kill people is going
to find a way. It's happened throughout history. It happened
before there were any guns. It's the way it's always been.
When we come back in a little while. In about
an hour, we're going to talk about the long history
(10:20):
of people with mental illness committing these crimes. Well, as
they are still investigating this mass shooting up in Minneapolis
with two children dead and fifteen others wounded, they are
trying to piece together exactly what happened. They have a
lot of evidence, including a video manifesto. But what exactly
(10:44):
are they after now that the FBI is involved in
local police are involved. Let's go to a man that's
been involved in these type of investigations in the past,
Michael Sapracone who ran for US Senate. He is a
retired NYPD, the first grade detective, and of course he's
security expert, and he is more than willing when we
(11:05):
ask him to come on, and we really appreciate that. Michael.
Speaker 7 (11:08):
Good morning, Good morning, Larry, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So what is going on right now in the investigation?
Speaker 7 (11:15):
I guess they're just trying to tie up woes ends
and make sure that they have all the possible situations
now packed And basically this becomes a training time for us,
for the law enforcements around the country, so we can
see what mistakes may have been made what we can
do to prevent these type of situations that are happening.
You have to realize security evolves. These threats evolve every
(11:39):
single day. We've gone from basic situations to cyber threats, terrorism,
and mass shooting. So we need to be excuse me,
prepared for these things. We need to talk about public awareness,
We need to talk about see something, say something. Obviously,
this is a young person with many, many issues over
the course of their twenty some years. I mean, when
(12:00):
we look at this manifesto, we see his hatred for Catholics,
his hatred for Jews, his hatred for President Trump. Pretty
much he hates everyone. He spells out different plans of
what he might do and where he might do it.
So listen, we never want to blame parents. I have
five children. But we need to be aware of the
(12:21):
things that we see in front of us. And sometimes
we're afraid of that and we don't want to bring
that up because we think it'll just pass. But obviously,
with what's going on in this country with mass shootings
over the last ten years, going back almost thirteen years
ago to Sandy and then to Texas and to Florida,
we have a problem that we need to solve and
we need to work together, and we need to be
(12:42):
aware of and mental health is a big part of
that problem. Leary.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yes, I agree with you, and we were just talking
about it a moment ago that it seems like in
all of these school shootings, this is a little bit different.
But in all the school shootings, it was a student
that was isolated, that that didn't have friends, that didn't
feel like they were connected to the rest of society,
and all through his schooling, this guy was the same way.
(13:10):
He felt isolated, he felt different, and so he was
left to his own devices. I mean, he was accumulating guns, obviously,
he was putting together these videos obviously, and so he
had plans for a long time. And I guess the
big question is is society to blame, not just the parents,
(13:31):
but everybody, because when somebody's different, we just isolate him,
we don't pay attention to them. Maybe we should be
paying more attention to those on the outskirts of society
who put themselves there or we put them there.
Speaker 7 (13:45):
Well, I don't disagree, I mean, but how do we
do that? That's the question. How do we do that?
How do we make that better? I mean this person, actually,
I mean he he planned this step by step, may
not have planned the actual way he was going to
do it, but by the markings on the weapons, by
the markings on the AMMO, by what he put together.
He legally bought guns. And I'm not really sure if
(14:07):
he purchased the guns or they were purchased by a
family member. That still hasn't really come out. But he
methodically planned this, that he would do something like this,
And how does that not pop up somewhere though? How
do we not see that? How do we not see
what rage is inside of him? But we still need
to look at how do we defend against these things?
And if it's not helping them mentally disturbed, how do
(14:30):
we do it? From a security background, I think, Larry,
what's important about that is coordination. You know, you have schools.
I was a school board president of Long Island for
many years, and of course I had a security company.
Sometimes cost outweigh what we need to do, and people concern, well,
if we put on guards in the school, it's going
to cost a lot of money. We don't really have
(14:51):
that in a budget. How will parents handle that? Well?
I think it's very important to show presence in the school.
And I'm not saying you should put a unifor OW
police officer there because that's almost impossible in most cases.
The police department doesn't have the manpower to do that.
But we should hire trained professionals in playing clothes total
least identify people and stop people as they come into
(15:14):
the schools and walk around the perimeters. Now, yet to
this situation seems like a situation that if we had
had somebody on some type of patrol, there being a
security officer, that might have been avoided this. This person
put two by fours to block the doors. So this
is not something that happened within a second before the incident.
So that's a possibility. If we had someone walking around
(15:36):
that school, we may that may have deterred him at
that moment, okay, from doing what he did. If we
had had a car in a parking lot, maybe a
security officer or you know, retired police officer with somebody
there that may have done something different. This is a
beautiful day in Minnesota, the first week of school. Young
people go into a mass, and into a mass, we
(15:58):
need to we need to think about how we safeguard
our children and everybody from these terrorizing attacks. I mean,
the response time is terrific with ATF being there and
the FBI being there right away. But this whole situation
appeared to be done before anybody responded to this Clety.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, and it seems like it was being planned for
a while. And how does nobody nobody notice that or
even pay attention to this kid as he was having
problems growing up? I guess because of privacy laws and
hippo laws. Maybe that's what have to has to change
when they think somebody can be a danger to themselves
or to others. I'm not sure where we go from
(16:39):
here with this case. What can be done? It seems
like every time we talk about it I did. However, Michael,
you'd be interested in that, and maybe you already know
about it. That there is something coming out now and
as a matter of fact, it's going to be sold
the police departments across the country in the next week.
And there's one police department that already has it that
scrubs soci media twenty four hours a day looking for
(17:03):
threats that police should be aware of that might have
helped in this case.
Speaker 7 (17:08):
I think that's a great idea. I mean, and you
know that's something we don't have to put a police
officer on to monitor that, right. We can have trained
individuals who are good at it and AI or able
to look at these things and be able to point
this out to the local authorities and say, hey, we
see a problem in this area with this person or
this group. I think that's a big deal. We've probably
been monitoring those things for a long time, Larry in
(17:31):
one way or another, the FBI and Secret Service, but
I think it's time we start doing that at a
local level.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
That's exactly That's exactly the difference, Michael, Michael, he's telling
it to local police departments. That's exactly the difference. They
may have this nationally, but he has it. Thanks so much,
Michael for your time. Michael Sapraconne. Always appreciate your expertise.
He ran for the US Senate. You'll remember retired NYPD
first grade detective and security expert. Have a good day.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Thanks firing you too.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Everybody is now trying to make sense of what happened
in Minneapolis with a Well, he's a lunatic. He had
a problem, and that nobody noticed. He planned this, He
spragged about it. On a video and then he did
(18:22):
the unthinkable. He went to a church, fired through the
windows and killed two children, shot fourteen other children and
three adults. Right now, let's get the very latest on
all of this with Christianne Cordero. She is on the
ground in Minneapolis. ABC News reporter Christi, Anne, thank you
(18:46):
so much for taking some time to talk to us today.
Can you just give us the latest what's going on
there right now?
Speaker 11 (18:53):
For sure, Larry, So, it's great to be with you. Look,
it's a community in morning, and I think even though
I know the community well, I lived here for several years,
and you know, it's one of those things where every
community has its own little kind of special touch to it,
but it unfortunately is also something that is familiar and
somewhat universal. So there is a memorial setup near the church,
(19:15):
and now investigators are focusing on, you know, making sure
all of the victims recover while while of course conducting
their investigation into the suspect and how this happened.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
We got a lot of information right off the bat
about the shooter. Can you share some of that and
tell us what new may have come out in the
last twenty four hours.
Speaker 11 (19:37):
Sure, So, we know that the shooter was twenty three
years old, went by the name Robin Westman. You know,
we our team at ABC News found driver's license information
because we know that there has been some conflicting information
over who the shooter was. But it appears that Westman
was born as Robert Westman. And so that's kind of
(20:00):
where a lot of the varieties I guess in pronouns
and names kind of get thrown in. So the shooter
went to this church at eight thirty am yesterday or
just before it shot through some stained glass windows. School
had started three days prior, and in that process, you know,
(20:20):
carrying three weapons between a rifle of shotgun and another
one that I'm blinking on right now, but you know,
killed two students and two children eight and ten years old,
and then another seventeen were injured. Of the seventeen that
were injured, fourteen for children. So it's just terrible on
(20:42):
so many levels. The good news that we can draw
from it is that it appears that everyone who was
injured and was taken to the hospital is expected to survive.
And that's something that we also got from investigators very
early on. So that was, you know, a good under
under some terrible circumstances.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's going to be a long time before they completely
recover from this. I'm not talking physically, but I mean mentally.
And some of the people at the school and everybody
that was involved, the first responders, the whole community. I
get that. The thing that I think that the people
that are listening right now, and I've been talking with
them can't understand is that nobody paid attention to this guy,
(21:25):
that he was able to fly under the radar all
these times. I know he nevern't have an arrest record,
but right the things he said in the manifesto were disturbing.
Was there no one else in his life? Do we
know anything about him?
Speaker 11 (21:41):
Investigators are still looking for a motive, of course, and
that's the core of it. A lot of times when
you have these writings or these videos that are published
after the fact, there's a lot there, right, and so
it's kind of like searching through the haystack and trying
to find what the stream of consciousness was. We should
note and this has been why they were forwarded now
that Wesman died of a self inflicted gunshot wound. So
(22:03):
so sometimes when you know we've spoken with many different
kinds of law enforcement throughout the years and throughout many
different kinds of tragedies, and the preference is always, of
course to have a suspect living, because that is really
your your only way of really knowing why. But in
this case, what they're going to do is they're going
to comb through the writings and the video that was
(22:24):
taken down very quickly off of YouTube. Wesson's mother worked
at the school, so that's always kind of like a
starting point, if you will. And she's alive, so so
there's there's a lot to kind of go through and
and it will take time. I mean, I think that's
that's the human nature, right is just to immediately ask
(22:45):
why and I and I would hope for the family's
sake that they will get some closure in all of this,
and that always has to come with some kind of
answers and accountability.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, Christian, I'm going to ask a lot of questions
I think at this point that you may not have
the answers to. I've been in your position many times,
and I know it's very very early in all of this,
but do we know much about his family? Did he?
Did he? We keep hearing about the mother did he
have a father in his life?
Speaker 11 (23:13):
We know that he had a father, I'm not sure,
to be honest with you, how present like in his life,
right could mean many different things. But one of our
affiliates I know, did go to the father's house. They
didn't really, you know, get anything noteworthy that's worth reporting
out of that encounter. And I don't even know if
(23:35):
they encountered the father specifically as much as just knowing
where he lived. But so you know, the father lived
in Minnesota and the mother did as well. Of course,
from all of the pieces that we've been able to
kind of gather together, he went to school locally, perhaps
even had ties to Annunciation early on in his you know,
(23:56):
childhood education experience, but then didn't go there later on.
But there's so much you know, that fluid and that
we have to learn about it, so it's unclear who
all was. The one thing that you did point out,
and rightfully so, is that there was no you know,
prior criminal history, So that kind of gives investigators a
(24:17):
blank starting point, if you will.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And it seems like he didn't have many people in
his life. I know his mother was there, but I
mean the fact that he was making this manifesto, the
fact that he had all these guns, it just seems
like he was an outcast and he was by himself,
and he was planning this and nobody was there to
stop him. Christianne, thank you so much. Christianne Cordero, who
was in Minneapolis, ABC News reporter, thanks again.
Speaker 7 (24:41):
Christianne, thank you
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