Christiane Cordero, ABC News reporter, interview

Christiane is in Minneapolis when the Mass shooting happened at the Catholic church. Investigators are seeking motives to understand the reason behind the suspect Robin Westman's attack.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everybody is now trying to make sense of what happened
in Minneapolis with a well, he's a lunatic. He had
a problem that nobody noticed. He planned this, he spragged
about it on a video, and then he did the unthinkable.

(00:21):
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 Christy Anne, thank you so much for

(00:44):
taking some time to talk to us today. Can you
just give us the latest what's going on there right now?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
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, with one of those things where every
community has its own little kind of special touch to it,
but unfortunately is also something that is familiar and somewhat universal.
So there is a memorial setup near the church, and

(01:13):
now investigators are focusing on, you know, making sure all
of the vistims recover while while of course conducting their
investigation into the suspect and how this happened.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
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 2 (01:35):
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

(01:57):
where a lot of the varieties I guess and 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,

(02:18):
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 were children. So it's just terrible on

(02:40):
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 education
under under some terrible circumstances.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
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,

(03:23):
that he was able to fly under the radar all
these times. I know he neverdn'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 2 (03:38):
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 wide they recorded now that

(03:59):
Wesmon died of a often pluted gunshot wound. So 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

(04:20):
through the writings and the video that was 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 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

(04:41):
is just to immediately ask 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 (04:54):
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 2 (05:11):
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 they

(05:32):
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,

(05:54):
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

(06:15):
blank starting point, if you will.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
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, christian Thank

(06:40):
you