Retired SWAT Commander Gene Petrino on the shooting of Charlie Kirk

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Mounts filling in for JT and today on September eleventh,
we thought we were going to be talking about a
tragedy that happened twenty four years ago, but we're actually
talking about a tragedy that happened less than twenty four
hours ago, in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Joining us
now is a retired SWAT commander Jean Petrino Geene. Welcome

(00:22):
to the show. Hi John, thank you, Thank you for
coming on. So I'd like for you too, because there's
been a lot of talk this morning about the man
who pulled the trigger, because we don't know a lot
of things, but you know a lot about these kind
of people and these kind of situations. I don't know
how closely you've been looking at the coverage and what
they know, what they don't know, But what we've seen

(00:46):
is it was a lone gunman. I guess it was
one bullet and he was from about two hundred yards away,
and he was dressed all in black. Does that match
up with what you've been hearing?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm hearing. I think that's
a very general description for a shooter, so's it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Surprising when these things normally happened. This seems like this
person had had this planned out a little bit, because
we don't have him for starters. You know, he got away,
so he must have planned his exitus. Is that typical?

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, every every one of these shootings that we see,
the shooters always follow the same pathway of violence. They
start off with agreements, they get angry, in this case,
angry for you know, Charlie Kirk for his opinions, and
then they start having violent ideations and from there it
just grows. They start planning, and they oftentimes do dry runs,
and it's fully thought out from the from the very beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
And they could have also had assistance, and I think
Donald Trump alluded to that when he was talking about
the person or persons involved, because sometimes it's difficult to
execute something like this without without some assistance. And I
have speculated the people who were the one person who
was arrested earlier in the situation was let go, I

(01:57):
guess arrested it detained and questioned if they weren't possibly
part of a larger you know, you know, a distraction
or something like that, because while everyone was focused on
this person, they even came out and stated, I think
it was Cash Brttel who said, yeah, we've got the guy,
and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. And that gave
an ample time for this guy, the real shooter, to

(02:18):
get to put distance between where he did it and
where he is now.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, you really don't
know until the investigations complete if there was more than
one person involved. Most of the shooters do act alone,
but there are a lot of instances where they didn't.
So sometimes just getting help and like you're saying, a
distraction would not be something I would think is unreasonable
to believe they've happened.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Jeane, let's talk about these kinds of events, because it
seems like a relatively soft target, so to speak, in
terms of it was out in the open, it was
not like in an enclosed space, so this person who
was shooting could have been shooting from almost any angle.
And while Charlie Kirk had security up in front of
the stage and with him up there, people to take
care of krowd and the immediately there was not I

(03:01):
guess a lot of thought hindsight being twenty twenty put
into But what about people who were able to reach
from several hundred yards away with a bullet and that
sort of thing. Is that some of the concerns that
you would consider in these situations.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, the biggest threat that you have in an open
area event is elevation. You know, we saw this with
the attempt assassination of President Trump a while back. It's
the same situation. You know, someone from a roof and
a high position can take a long shot, can reasonably
be undetected if there's not adequate security. And in this case,

(03:38):
you know, once again this was this was a huge
lapse in security. Why there was someone that had the
ability to get to a rooftop, Why there wasn't some
kind of drone surveillance being done. There's a lot of things,
and I think oftentimes, you know, it's a money issue,
and it's also a belief that it's not going to happen,

(03:58):
and that's just flawed thinking. Rtually has tragic results.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
And sadly, we have to learn these things the hard
way and we've learned from this, but the lesson came
at a terrible price. Gene Patrino he is a retired
SQUAT commander and the CEO of Survival Response LLC Gene,
thank you so much for joining us this morning on
Alabama's morning news.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Thanks John,