if you're just joining us we're following breaking news out of orlando, florida. 31 minutes past the hour, police are investigating a mass shooting, they're now calling an act of terrorism, up to 20 people have been killed in this shooting that later turned into a hostage situation and a single gunman is dead inside that club. >> we're looking probably in the range of 20 but we don't want to give you an exact figure. multiple people transported to the hospital. unfortunately there are people that we're trying to clear that the pulse nightclub evolved any devices. we did find a device on the suspect himself and possibly his car, so we're trying to clear all that and unfortunately, there are some people who have succumbed to gunshot wounds,

maybe around 20 inside of the nightclub. >> can you go into a little bit more detail about your time line once you were able to stop the suspect and get in there? i know that you had some of the surviving victims beingb interviewed? >> absolutely. 0200 hours our officer working extra duty respond to shots fired. he and two other officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect. this developed into the hostage situation so right about a little after 5:00 this morning, we made a decision to go in and rescue. we were being contacted by people in the bathroom by a separate area our biggest concern was future loss of life. we want to say as people, so we did an entry and exchanged gunfire with the suspect. you said explosive devices were used as well as our bearcat was

used to get through the wall. >> officers being highly praised by law enforcement analyst this is morning. we know at least 42 people have been injured including a police officer who got into a gun battle with that shooter. here's what witnesses saw as it was happening. >> i didn't see any of the actual shooters. i saw bodies going down. i fell down, crawled out. people were trying to escape out the back. i believe things may have been knocked down. when i hit the ground i was crawling and hit my elbows and knees and i got across the street, blood everywhere.

i was helping somebody because he was laying down, i wasn't sure where he was dead alive, hey, are you alive? hey, are you okay? he didn't speak english but the person next to us who was helping us spoke, i don't know if it was portuguese but able to get his name and i took my bandana off, put it in a knot and shoved it in the bullet hole in his back, because it didn't go through. it stayed in. the second person i helped, she got hit in the arm, and her name is karlisha and she came from ohio as well because i moved here from ohio so moving here, this is my first nightclub being out here two months and this is the experience. i didn't know it was latin night. i didn't understand the music, i still danced. i sweat but it's under my nails a little bit and it was tragic. >> what did you hear? >> loud, banging noise like gunshots going off the course. i wasn't sure if it was the music, i thought it was a song. it was kind of like it went with the beat almost until you heard

too many shots. it was just like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! that's when you just know chaos is just, it was in turmoil and there had to have been one or two, or an extended clip, i don't know much about the guns but it sounded like it could have been a handgun or something. >> but they won't let us know. they're not letting us know any names of anybody. >> reporter: what can you tell us about what happened? >> well, i could tell you that my son was in there with his boyfriend, and two other guys, two other friends, and the two friends went to the bathroom and when they went to the bathroom, they heard about 20 shots, and then they recognized and took off running and while they were waiting outside the club, they saw juan, who was my son's boyfriend, they saw him being transported into an ambulance with multiple gunshots but my

son hasn't been heard from. i don't know if he was left in the club if he got shot or if he's being worked on here. >> the people wondering where their loved ones are, it's been six and a half hours since this shooting, and there are people just like that mom who are asking a lot of questions and wondering if they can find the people that they love, who they know were in that club at the time of the shooting. boris sanchez is there. we've been talking a lot about the why, but let's talk about the who. let's talk about the people who had been walking up and down those streets trying to get some information about the people that they love. what are you learning this hour? >> christi, it's difficult to imagine what those family members had to have been going through in the hours after all

of this was unfolding with the reports there was a hostage situation and reports there were mass casualties. i can tell you there say bit of good news in all of this. initially our team saw chaos outside the orlando regional medical center with gurneys and doctors and nurses outside, trying to talk to family members, and tend to those that were wounded. now things have calmed down considerably. everyone that was outside has basically been taken inside the hospital and now they're requesting anyone that believes that they had an immediate family member inside the club to go through the main entrance at the hospital and provide i.d. so they can make sure that everyone is vouched for and that they're supposed to be there. you remember the hospital is only about five blocks from the actual club itself and it was on lockdown from 2:00 a.m. around the time that shots rang out as well. so many questions to be answered here, not the least of which who was hurt. obviously tense time for family members, and i should also note

as we were standing here we saw several corner vehicles we can drive to the scene so it's going to be a long, painful process to help those that are injured in healing but also to identify the dead and ultimately to figure out why all of this had to happen. christi. >> a lot of families just want to, they just want the people that they love to be back with them, and if they happen to be some of those people who are, who have passed away inside that nightclub, they just want their bodies back. tom fuentes, law enforcement analyst telling us it could be hours before those bodies are taken out, as this investigation continues. we're going to take a very quick break. do stay with us. those new glasses? they are. do i look smarter? yeah, a little. you're making money now, are you investing? well, i've been doing some research. let me introduce you to our broker. how much does he charge?

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if you're joining us, it's been a very disturbing morning, following breaking news out of orlando, florida, where police are investigating a mass shooting, what could be one of the worst mass shootings in american history and they are now calling it an act of terrorism. at least 20 people have been killed. this shooting later turned into a hostage situation. we know that a single gunman is dead, inside this club, it's a gay nightclub in downtown orlando called the pulse. police are looking at possible ties between this shooter and radical islamic terrorism but at least 42 people have been injured including a police officer who got into a gun battle with that shooter. listen here to a witness at the nightclub describe what happened. >> it's shocking. >> if you had to count how many shots? >> more than 20 or 30. it was just one after another

after another after another and it could have lasted a whole song i mean, because after everybody was out the shootings were still going and the cops were yelling "go, go, clear the area! clear the area!" we're like [ bleep ]. when i bent down to help this guy, it's like, are you kidding? you're still watching yourself and then you see people on the side of the buildings and i jumped a couple times, i wasn't sure if that person was someone with a gun or if there were somebody who was hiding. you don't know who is what and who is where. you're just like, oh, man. >> want to let you now,oo, the lockdown has been lifted at two of the homts in orlando, winne hospital and arnold palmer hospital were lifted, orlando regional medical center was on lo lockdown. i want to go to brian stelter. i want to point something out that was interesting this morning, the majority of the

communication between the orlando police department and the public was being done via twitter. and one of the things that came out of the press conference that they did eventually have about an hour and 15 minutes ago or an hour and a half ago was the fact that they have definitively characterized this tragedy as an act of terrorism. brian, what are you seeing? >> i'm struck by that because i think we're seeing a gradual evolution in the use of the word terrorism by american law enforcement and media. oftentimes you hear terrorism you instinctively think about international terrorist attacks, international actors. in this case authorities are saying it may be domestic terror, international terror. one way or another it is terrorism. it hearts to the heart of the word. any time 60 plus people struck by bullets this an act designed to instill fear and terror and thus matches the definition of

terrorism. approximately 20 dead and 42 injured that gets you above 60 people struck by gunfire. it's heartwrenching to think about the fact we don't know exactly how many people are inside of this club dead. it is reminiscent of the attack in paris last november which was clearly an act of international islamic terrorism but in that attack it took a long time to know how many people were inside that nightclub, that theater. as your guests were saying earlier it will take several hours for us to know the death toll. in the meantime the search for the missing, the search for friends is heartbreaking to see on social media. as you mentioned the police using twitter to communication because the scene was so chaotic they couldn't hold a press conference. friends and club goers are using facebook and twitter as well to communicate, messages from people still six and a half hours later not able to find their friends or loved ones still searching for people and that will go on i suppose as we go on this morning. >> cedric alexander, sitting on

the set here with me mentioned how tough it is to be at some of these crime scenes and there are these people who have passed away now and their phones are ringing, because people are desperately trying to call them to get to them, and real quickly, you say i ask, do officers ever actually answer those phones? >> in this circumstance probably not. i think there's going to be a way to make identification probably many victims probably have some form of identification on their person. under extreme circumstances that may be the case. it just all depends, but here again, in a situation such as that, it's very traumatic. i can only imagine for the rescue workers who have to walk in and around that scene and do the work that they do, when you have that large number of people who are laying there deceased. >> you want to hold them in reverence certainly. >> yes. >> do stay close.

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we're following breaking news this morning that has been clarified as an act of terrorism and a very horrific crime there in orlando, florida. police investigating a mass shooting, what could be one of the worst mass shootings in american history, approximately 20 people have been killed. 42 injured in a shooting that later turned into a hostage situation, this happened a gay nightclub in orlando. single gunman is dead inside that club, and police are looking into possible ties between the shooter and radical islamic terrorism. we know lockdowns have now been lifted at two area hospitals, where some of the victims were taken. three area hospitals were on lockdown and a very expansive

perimeter was set after this 2:00 a.m. shooting, and now we are almost seven hours later, and there are we believe still people who do not have word as to what has happened to their loved ones, people that they believe who may have been in that club. i do want to listen here to what one of the police officers was saying about their investigation. >> do we consider this an act of terrorism? absolutely. we are investigating this from all parties' perspective as an act of terrorism. any time that we have potentially dozens of victims and any of our communities that i think we can qualify that as a terrorist activity. whether that's a domestic terrorist activity or an international one is certainly something we will get to the bottom of. we're glad to have the partnerships we've spoken about, particularly the partnership of the fbi here. one of the important things we'll get to the bottom of is do

we have any indicators before this event happened today? we will have some more information i'm sure forthcoming to all of you about who this individual is, was he a lone wolf? does he have any associates? those are certainly all of the things that will be looked into now as part of our intelligence and investigative activities. >> want to bring in brian stelter who has been studying social media. so much information thrown out there on social media as we watch this unfold. when they talk about an act of terrorism we want to remind people that doesn't immediately attach it to an international arena here. an act of terrorism could be domestic. it could be a hate crime, and that's something that a lot of people are concerned about today. >> yes, by some definitions, terrorism is an act for political purposes. however in some cases authorities use it in a broader way and we should note the

context here involving the gay nightclub. we're seeing some reactions on social media, people saying we're downplaying that. i don't think we are. this was a gay nightclub, there were many people there, sounds like about 300 people there at the time. authorities don't have any indication that this location was targeted because it was a gay nightclub. pride weekend is going on in d.c., l.a. and elsewhere. there's no evidence it was linked because it was a gay nightclub. we hear from the executive director of lgbt center telling "the orlando sentinel" this makes no sense, this was an attack on the lgbt community. whether it was targeted because there were gays and lesbians celebrating dancing at 2:00 in the morning, targeted or not this is very personal for the people who were there, the people that were nearby and we're seeing a lot of reactions online. >> i think it's personal for all of us who watch this break down. these are people who were just there to be together to have a good time and it is what we have

come to know as being defined as a soft target, if somebody wanted to hurt people, you wouldn't expect it to be in a situation like this. i want to go to john matthews now. former police officer, author of "mass shootings: six steps to survival." john, when you hear everything that we're hearing thus far this morning as we are now seven hours into this tragedy, what are your first thoughts? >> well, that there's a tremendous number of dead, tremendous number of injured. we started looking at some of the comparisons to other shootings that we've had around the country. only at the cinemax in 2012 in colorado did we have injured 58. this is number two as far as mass shootings and it's a round number, virginia tech, sandy hook, lube's and mcdonald's as

the number of dead. this is one of the largest mass shootings that we've seen, but unfortunately it's not the first one we have' seen at a nightclub. we've had a number of shootings at night clubs dating all the way back to the early 1980s, so -- >> certainly nothing of this magnitude. >> nothing of this magnitude. >> this man came in, just to clarify, this man came in with an assault type rifle, a handgun an other devices. >> reporter: certainly he was well armed. he was prepared. he knew it was a soft target, just like you were talking about. you had a tremendous number of people in a very small place and unfortunately that's what leads to a very high body count. >> so since you've written this book "six steps to survival of mass shooting" were you surprised as many of our law enforcement analysts were, that it was a mass shooting that turned into a hostage situation at one point? >> yes, usually you don't see that. typical characteristics that we

see as the shooter goes in, he actually will commit the act, and then they'll usually either kill them selves or do suicide by cop. rarely does it turn into a hostage situation and a negotiation type situation. that is extremely unusual for these type of attacks. >> so what is your gut tell you about that? >> well, i think that this is something that was well planned. i think this shooter had probably a primary target, is what i would imagine he was going to look at a specific victim or set of victims. after he did that, he probably shot a number of other individuals, but didn't have the plan clear in his head as far as an exit plan. most of our shooters don't have an exit plan, and they want to die in a hail of gunfire. this shows me this shooter was conflicted and didn't know, did he want to die or did he want to tell his story. >> law enforcement analyst cedric alexander said sometimes

in his experience people might have second thoughts but never ends well when they do. john matthews we appreciate it so much and to all of you who stayed with us this morning. we thank you for being here. our thoughts and prayers to all of those folks in orlando as they try to reconcile what has happened and to the police officers and the authorities there who have done such a stellar job as our law enforcement analysts have been saying all morning. stay with us. thank you so much. "state of the union" with jake tapper is on now. good morning, i'm jake tapper in washington with breaking news, specifically a horrific massacre in florida. police say that some 20 people are dead and 42 injured, after a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in orlando. the special fbi agent in charge says there are suggestions the suspect may have had leaningings toward radical islamic terrorism, although nothing is definitive yet. police released the first details a short time ago.