it is approaching the top of the hour. i'm ayman mohyeldin. >> we're following this dramatic news from southern california. there have been a mass shooting at a very popular college town bar. >> so about 11:20 this evening our department received a call of shots fired at the borderline bar and grill. first deputies on scene entered to confront the suspect after they heard shots. i can tell you right now that we know of at least 11 victims. there are multiple fatalities. one of the victims is one of our sheriff deputies. >> pretty chilling there. we have just gotten word that the sheriff deputy is right now in surgery. several hundred people inside at the time, according to the ventura county sheriff's department. they will be taking the lead in this investigation. shots were still being fired

when deputies arrived on scene. police say they believe the shooter is down inside that building. but again we're not getting word on the condition of the shooter, whether or not he's alive. he has been neutralized, is what they're saying. authorities are saying to try to avoid the area for sure. >> joining us now on the phone cal perry, nbc news correspondent. >> the scene has really been through two sort of waves. authorities arrived around 11:45 local time. the shooter, it appears, was quickly neutralized, although of course at least 11 people wounded at this point. the scene now is going through what seems to be sort of more of an investigative nature. the posture, even though we don't know what the condition of the shooter is, certainly not

that of an active shooting scene. one of the things about this bar -- and for people who know california, this is right down the 101, about 40 miles from los angeles. this bar was full of college kids. a lot of those kids stopping by, talking to the local media on their way out. take a listen. >> there was like a little smoke bomb. my friends actually saw it because under the stools with her. she saw the smoke bomb start to go off and we just heard everyone say run, booked it out to the parking lot, tried to get near my car and i was there with like a group of people, amazing people. luckily two paramedics and an ex-veteran, thank god. very fortunate to have them there because there were two people a little injured.

>> one of the things we've been hearing repeatedly are those reports of smoke. unclear if that came from the weapons that were used inside of this club or whether the gunman had some kind of a smoke grenade. earlier andrew was talking about how so many of these folks were hiding inside. what we're watching play out now is sort of the methodical look through this club. all too familiar, of course, for americans, the idea of young people hiding in these clubs as we watch this scene be cleared. >> i don't know if you're heading to the scene of the location at this time, cal, but let me get your thoughts on a few things really quickly. one, as alex was mentioning, the area located about 40 miles north of los angeles, a relatively sleepy part of ventura county, not necessarily an area that had experienced anything like this in the past,

is that correct? >> sleepy and safe. i was out there the other day. this is just north of malibu. you see a lot of tourists out in this area. it's absolutely beautiful. i heard alex talking about pepperdine. a lot of the kids being interviewed by the local media went the cal lutheran. this was a very popular country music bar. so in an area of the country like this where you have kids from all over the country, you have these bars. but in an area like this in southern california, you have these bars that are of course filled with tourists as well. wednesday night in this part of the country isn't necessarily wednesday night in other parts of the country. this bar fit hundreds of kids and it was probably pretty crowded at thelooking add t ini borderline bar and grill.

it has a really active social calendar. it seems to be a local hot spot. do you know if there was security at the door? as we've been discussing, this is not new to americans. in t do you know if the place had security? >> we keep hearing about this sheriff's deputy. while police are saying that everything is still preliminary, one of the things we've been hearing from witnesses is there was an exchange of gunfire at the door perhaps between that sheriff's deputy and the gunman. the other thing we've been hearing which is really sad and is a sign of the times is kids ran out of this bar and into the hills, into the actual hills of southern california and were hiding in the hills because it's protocol to get out of these places. if you can run, run. if you hide, hide. and if you can't do either of these, you fight.

so many of these young people are coming out of this bar at midnig midnight. they're speaking in an incredibly intelligent manner to the media saying i knew exactly what to do in the case of a mass shooting. >> those hills lead right into the beautiful calabasas hills. these kids are running for their lives in the dark at night. we are expecting, cal, that the number of injured will go up, only because some of these kids were able the get themselves out of the borderline bar and grill and get themselves to a hospital for treatment. >> we are getting confirmation from knbc again that, in fact, the shooter is now confirmed to be dead. not yet clear exactly whether he was shot by police or maybe even took his own life. but knbc is reporting the shooter is now dead.

>> at least there won't be an active shooter situation at this point. >> certainly very much an active scene in the sense that police are still going to comb through and try to piece together the timeline of where this shooter came from, why he targeted that location and minute by minute account of what unfolded inside that bar until deputies were able to get there and ultimately contain the situation. >> let's hope that imminent danger now has passed at that point for these kids who are terrified. what an extraordinary situation. cal perry, thank you so much for phoning in and giving us information. we also need to thank andrew blankstein. before we make a turn to other news, danny, your thoughts on this? legally speaking, how much does a club like this hold responsibility? must they all now have security at the doors?

does this pose legal threats potentially for the borderline bar and grill, or are they just as much a victim as any of these college students? >> places that are open to the public, particularly when those people come in and give the business money, have the duty to make the business as safe as they can and guard against foreseeable risks. the question for all of us in a modern society is, is a shooter a foreseeable risk of just doing business? certainly going forward at this particular bar and restaurant, it's going to be considered a foreseeable risk because it actually happened. but ten years ago, 20 years ago, this is not the kind of risk that a bar or restaurant would have considered foreseeable. you wouldn't have considered it in a theater, for example. >> right. >> churches, synagogues. >> times are changing. >> the tragic event that we're

so often familiar with these mass shootings, but every single time we hear whether it is at a nightclub like pulse or even at the video gaming center that took place in florida and the synagogue recently. the motivation i think also is going to be something a lot of people look into of whether this is kind of brushed off as a crazy person going in and shooting up a nightclub for whatever motivation, or it could be something more sinister like we saw in orlando with the pulse nightclub shooting being terrorists or a hate crime. >> we're getting a little more from eyewitnesss on the scene. let's take a listen. >> all i remember was standing there with my friend and i heard the shots. i don't know if i looked over before because we kind of were facing that way by the dance

floor a little bit. i'm pretty sure i saw him. i'll never get the picture out of my head. we dropped and we heard the gunshots, a lot of gunshots, a lot of gunshots. i don't even -- a lot. i was just laying there kind of not -- everyone was under the table, so it was hard to kind of get under there, but i was with my friends. i looked behind me and there was a smoke bomb going off. like see sparks and i just see smoke everywhere. and my friends just got up and we just ran. >> one of several eyewitnesss that we were heard from, all describing the scene of utter chaos. it was interesting that use of the smoke bombs. sheriff's deputies say when they got on scene they were not able to confirm smoke bombs. they must have been thrown inside the club just to create more chaos and melee. >> when you put it on the spectrum of possibilities in

terms of how planned or deliberate the attack was, there was this one account by one of our eyewitnesss saying that he saw the gunman, he described him as a light skinned individual with dark hair, said he had a short barrelled automatic pistol with a magazine. he emptied the magazine and then reloaded, which gives you the sense of the time he had and that this seems to have been a deliberate attack. >> it also speak es to the styl of gun he was using, the fact that can he emptied a magazine. with that many people inside that bar, you're going to have people running from that bar, but if you have that many people you could have people who want to take him down. >> we will be following this breaking story throughout the morning and of course we're going to have all the details as they unfold throughout the course of the hour. we also have the other big

headlines from today. we definitely want to bring you up to speed. political earthquake yesterday, jeff sessions out. democrats are now in. the new shake-up in the trump administration as republicans lose control of the house. we're going to have all those stories and a check on the weather when we come right back. it was here. i couldn't catch my breath. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib.

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numbering about 200 by most accounts inside the borderline bar and grill. for parents who may be tuning into this, the colleges in that community, we'll just name them. we do not know students who may have been inside this borderline bar and grill, but the closest are california lieutenautheran r pepperdine, channel islands. again, the gunman has been killed and we await further word and details from ventura county sheriff's deputies of this tragedy about 40 miles north of los angeles downtown. we want to switch gears for a moment now and talk about president trump, who came out in denial of tuesday's midterm results, declaring republicans' performance, quote, close to complete victory.

despite an election where americans game democrats control of the house where they gained 28 seats with 15 still undecided. that amounted to six claimers moving to the democrats' control on tuesday night alone. a total of seven losses for republicans under president trump. now even in the senate where the president says that he focused his attention, at least 6 of 10 states with democratic senators that trump won chose to reelect the democrat and in substantial margins in wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania and ohio. senator john tester is the apparent winner for the third term in montana where trump won by 20 points. despite the president traveling to the state four times in four months to personally campaign against him. nbc's peter alexander broke the news to trump on live television yesterday. watch this. >> they just announced that john

tester won. >> congratulations john tester. congratulations. i'm sure you're very unhappy about that. >> that's just a snapshot of the president's combative responses in his longest solo news conference yet. it went on for about an hour and 17 minutes. you can imagine a lot of fireworks. the president's move drifted from somber to surly. >> last night the republican party defied history for the midterm year. we also had a staggering number of house retirements. you had some that decided to -- let's stay away, let's stay away. i'm not sure that i should be happy or sad, but i feel just fine about it. carlos, mia love lost. barbara comstock was another

one. pe >> whose fault is it there were retirements? >> it's me, pure and simple. i retired him. i'm very proud of it. if the republicans won and held on by two or one or three, it would have been very hard out of that many republicans to ever even get support among republicans. the closer it is, the worse it is. i'll be honest, i thought that was very close to complete victory. from a deal making standpoint, we are all much better off the way it turned out. >> an interesting news conference, to say the least. >> we call it a presidential news conference. i have to say it doesn't sound that presidential to me. >> walking away from the podium, telling people to sit down. interesting. still ahead the fbi will almost certainly be involved in the investigation of this mass shooting that is unfolding in california, but today there is major shakeup within the justice department as attorney general jeff sessions is off the job. we're going to talk about the

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shaquem get in here. take your razor, yup. alright, up and down, never side to side, shaquem. you got it? come on, get back. quem, you a second behind your brother, stay focused. can't nobody beat you, can't nobody beat you. hard work baby, it gonna pay off. you got this. with the one hundred and forty-first pick, the seattle seahawks select. alright, you got it, shaquem. alright, let me see. we heard a bunch of shots obviously have a semiautomatic rifle. the police showed up. three of them went to the door. currently there's one officer down as they were breechi ibrea front entrance. >> that is a very frightened

eyewitness to the borderline bar and grill shooting that took place about three hours ago in southern california in the thousand oaks area. the gunman has been killed, found dead inside that bar. we know there are at least 11 injured, including one sheriff's deputy in surgery right now.

>> police have not established a motive yet behind the shooting. we have one eyewitness account who described the shooter as a light skinned man with dark black hair who at one point during the shooting managed to reload his weapon. we heard a report that it was a semiautomatic rifle. another witness described it as a pistol that was reloaded. obviously police have not yet commented on the nature of this attack in terms of how it unfolded minute by minute, what the weaponry that was used might have been. but we do know from police as well that at least one deputy sheriff was injured and we got word within the last half hour or so that deputy sheriff was being treated or was undergoing surgery at an area hospital. we do expect that number of 11 injured to rise as we also got word that some of those injured inside and who may have been injured actually took themselves

to area hospitals for treatment. >> a couple of them. los robles hospital is an acute care hospital. still ahead, the midterms are in the books, especially for president trump who's hoping to turn the conversation into something else. but some key races are still undecided. we're going to talk about where those stand today and why washington looks like a very different place this morning. back in a moment. stay with us.

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welcome back, everyone. as we approach the bottom of the

hour, we are following breaking news from southern california where there has been a mass shooting at a popular college town bar in the town of thousand oaks. police say there are at least 11 victims and, quote, multiple fatalities, although that number remains unknown. a police officer was among those wounded and has been rushed to a local area hospital. witnesses also described seeing smoke bombs go off inside. according to the ventura county sheriff's department, shots were still being fired when deputies arrived on scene. there were several hundred people inside the bar at the time. we have learned that the shooter inside the building is now deceased. cal, bring us up to speed on what you have learned. >> the headline is that the gunman is dead. this is no longer an active

scene. police are going to be starting the investigation in full. this is thousand oaks, california, about halfway between los angeles and ventura, california, about 40 miles to the west of los angeles. this was college night at the borderline bar and grill. this is a bar that fits hundreds of kidkids. we're told that it's very popular in the area, that the place was packed. one of the things we've been seeing as this played out on television stations across california is these college kid streaming out of this bar, streaming past news cameras giving their sense of what happened. we have some fresh sound from the scene. take a listen. >> he was yelling stuff. he walked in. he was probably yelling but i didn't get a clear thing. he popped another 20 shots and

then ten minutes after that, the cops came like ten minutes after that. i'm on the phone with 911 the whole time telling them my friend just got popped and he's right in front of me yelling and freaking out. i saw him walk in and he started shooting. i thought it was a cap gun. it sounded like a cap gun. but everyone ducked and then we ducked. we grabbed the girls, me and tim, and he dragged them behind this long wall. the dance floor is to our right. we dragged them behind that. i went and grabbed a chair and broke the window when he started throwing smoke grenades in. >> one of the things we've been talking about throughout the morning and you heard it there is the familiarity a lot of these kids are viewing mass shootings.

if you can run, run. if you can hide, hide. and if you have to fight, fight. one of the things we're dealing with is this period of time where people who may have hid don't know necessarily that it's safe to come out. this is still very early. this is still preliminary stages. police are methodically working through what is normally a very dark nightclub, but working through those rooms to see if there's anyone still hiding or sheltering in place. >> as we look at the borderline bar and grill and you think about the community that would have attended an event like this, the college country night, i think it's important to note that there are several colleges and universities in the neighborhood that would be at least accessible to that area. wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that kids would drive from malibu where

pepperdean university sits. also california lutheran, cal state, channel islands. this was a very very popular bar. if you look at its website and look at the amount of events they have scheduled, they really do cater to the young kids and also the country music fans. it's a place that we know that it's a large place and it was able to hold at least 200 inside that bar tonight. it's a place that's very popular with locals there in thousand oaks. >> because it was a college town, a lot of students in the area. you can imagine how scared, terrified the parents who are getting word of this shooting and also wondering if their kid were inside. in fact, we actually have now an

interview with a father who showed up to the scene looking for his son who was inside. let's take a listen. >> jake went there tonight with friends. >> correct. it's a local hangout especially on college night. it's not uncommon for him to be there with some friends. we were woken up by a knock on the door. a friend of his was there. he said you ready? we're right behind you. i'm going to finish this game of pool. got home, for whatever reason he found out about it through social media or the news or whomever. him and his dad immediately came to our house banging on our door with concern. weave been trying to get a hold of him since probably 1:00. >> you can obviously hear the voice of the father there kind of -- >> he said trying to get a hold of him since 1:00. this shooting started about 11:20 there local time. it's been for us about three

hours and 15 minutes since things got underway. that's a long time for that father to wait for word. the good news is many were able to get out of the club and they were just taking off running for their lives, running into the hills there of the thousand oaks area. it sort of borders calabasas. hopefully these kids maybe dropped their phone in the process. get to a phone as quick as you can and get to your parents. >> we saw one of the local reporters -- i've had the unfortunate experience of covering the orlando mass shooting and other mass shootings here. but there was no command post to set up yet to deal with the victims and information flow. you have parents, relatives, friends who come to the scene immediately looking for loved

ones. >> also on scene right now we have nbc news national correspondent miguel almaguer. let's talk about what you're seeing what the latest is in terms of injuries. >> i can tell you that the crime scene is about a half mile up the road here. we're expecting a press conference here in about 10-15 minutes. we should get the latest from the ventura county sheriff. it's a very active scene. the press is being pushed back forward. all of the victims have since been transported to local hospitals or treat eed on scene here. the suspect has been killed, is said to still be inside that restaurant and bar that turned into a nightclub overnight. we can tell you that we've also

seen some first responders. ambulances have not been rushing in and out of this area. that tells us for the most part that the scene is secure and they're moving toward the investigative stage. >> i know that you just got there on the scene. we're going to learn more from the police when they brief the reporters, but give us a sense of some of the folks around there. are you seeing a lot of parents trying to find their loved ones inside? we just played a sound bite of a father who arrived on scene. what is the scene there like now for loved ones looking for relatives? >> there certainly are loved ones who have been arrived here on scene. there's multiple entries to this area. some people are being blocked off by police. the press is being allowed to this area right here. we just met a young woman who was looking for a friend who was inside the club. she has not been able to speak to that friend. it's unclear if the friend was

injured or if the friend made it out and lost the cell phone. obviously we don't know how many people have been killed in this incident n incident, but certainly many loved ones here coming to the scene trying to figure out exactly what's going on and where their loved ones are. >> we will follow more with you miguel. the midterms are over now. we're just 725 days away from the 2020 presidential election. aren't you glad i made that point? >> never too soon to start. a new poll on how president trump could fare against former vice president joe biden.

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thousand oaks, california. we are expecting the ventura county sheriff's office to hold a news conference. we're going to bring that to you live as soon as it gets underway. just hours after the midterm vote, president trump is working to change the narrative by announcing his embattled attorney general jeff sessions is out of a job. shortly after those contentious post measuremeidterm press conf the president announced on twitter we are pleased to announce matthew whittaker will become our new acting attorney general of the united states. he will serve our country well. we thank attorney general jeff sessions for his service and wish him well. a permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date. sessions' updated resignation letter begins by stating he was stepping down at trump's request. the president has increasingly

hammered sessions on his decision to recuse himself from overseeing mueller's russia probe. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein was at the white house for what officials say was a previously scheduled meeting, according to the department of justice. rosenstein will no longer oversee the mueller probe. acting attorney general whittaker is in charge of all matters under the purview of the doj. >> joining us danny cevallos and sam stein. i've got to get your thoughts on the timing of this. you have this contentious very combative news conference with the president and reporters. and almost minutes afterwards this bombshell that attorney general jeff sessions is effectively resigning. you immediately think was this deliberately done by the administration as a distraction given the midterm elections and why wouldn't the president bring this up in a news conference and

announce it to the public? >> it does seem conspicuous, the timing. i think this was obviously planned for a while. the president's relationship with jeff sessions was toxic at best. he had long been angered at the fact that he had recused himself from the russia probe and he wanted to push him out. of course to do so before the midterms would be really problematic, so they waited. i didn't think it was going to come literally hours after the midterms. i wish they would have waited one day for my own personal well-being. but now essentially trump has an ally in the position of u.s. attorney general and someone who can oversee the probe and also someone who has publicly expressed skepticism of what robert mueller is doing. and he has this person, matthew whittaker at least for 210 days under the vacancy act. this is a very critical juncture in the presidency. you could call it a distraction from the midterms.

i'm not sure it's that because he's always wanted to do it. but it creates a huge potentially constitutional crisis going forward. >> to sam's point here, the president has a good six months plus with matthew whittaker, who can be at the helm there of the doj. let's talk about what this means for the mueller investigation, the extent to which this person, the shifting of the guard can have an influence on the direction, the halting, the putting in roadblocks for the investigation. where does this leave us? >> in the immediate future, as i understand it, rosenstein for the moment is the acting attorney general until the new acting attorney general gets in and is confirmed. that's whittaker. he serves for 210 days and there's some wiggle room at the end of that time period under

the vacancies reform act. but the power that he has eventually over the mueller investigation will be considerable. now, there are, of course, four cause provisions if he wants to outright fire mueller. but he also has considerable power as the a.g. over whatever mueller delivers to him ultimately. in the future what we may see is mueller continuing to speak with indictments, continuing to speak by handing off investigations to districts and united states attorneys in specific districts and leaving things out of the mueller team's investigation, there immunizing them from his potential firing. and by potential, i mean mueller's potential firing or the ending of the investigation by an attorney general situation thet -- sympathy thetic to the trum

cause. >> the president feels emboldened by the midterm results. he's going to have face-to-favo senate control. are we hearing they may block a confirmation for the next attorney general? >> one of the decisions to force sessions to resign at this point is that trump will have a more favorable senate come january 2nd. he will have more votes, more reliable votes in the senate. those are critical for confirming whoever is the permanent successor to jeff sessions. whittaker will probably end up serving in this capacity until 2019, at which point trump will have likely two or three more votes. now, can he just shove anyone through is the question. there are skeptical senators who will be there. yesterday we saw susan collins speak out, saying don't fire robert mueller. mitt romney who is taking this jeff flake like position now in the senate, the conscience of republicans apparently, he said

mueller needs to see it through to the end. there are some risks if you nominate someone who's perceived to be too big of a political ally. i also think that the administration isn't going to push out bob mueller tomorrow. they're not going to fire him. first of all, they need cause. secondly, it would be politically stupid. they probably want to kill this special prosecutor by a thousand cuts, cut the budget out from under him, butt limitations -- >> whittaker said he would do that. >> he said that in his various cable news appearances. what we'll see is the mueller investigation sort of grind down. maybe they've gotten to a point where they're fine, they've done a lot of leg work, they can produce reports and pass them off. >> so the president has to work with the now democratically

controlled house. he spoke about working with nancy pelosi. nancy pelosi said prior to the election if she were returned to power, she would want to have all sorts of investigations, notably his personal taxes, any number of things. they're stayed away at this point from the "i" word. what do you think the likelihood is that donald trump will work effectively with nancy pelosi? he indicated -- he said we can get things done and get things done in a very short time, but we know that doesn't always happen. >> we know enough history of trump to understand that you can't really take whatever he says at its word. he's promised to work with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer before and turned around and broken the deals they apparently have cut. now if he wants any legislation done, he actually does have to work with house democrats. you could make the case it would be strategic for him to start doing that. there are things that they do actually want to work on

together, infrastructure, investments, opioid legislation, prescription drug prices. that's stuff that trump does have overlap legislatively with house legislation interests with. house democrats aren't particularly in the mood to work with the guy. if he does, for instance, tie these two stories together, if he pushes out mueller, ultimately, the house democrats will pick up that investigation now. this is what makes the -- this is the importance of the election is that if mueller is gone, the intel committee is going to rebald but house judiciary could subpoena the mueller report to where it is now. they'll continue the investigation potentially. >> do you believe the president was genuine when he said he had all this praised that he heaped on nancy pelosi? >> i believe he's genuine at all times. what are you talking about? >> this is like -- this is

classic trump trolling. >> we see eye to eye on that one. >> thank you for the conversation. much appreciate it, guys. we'll see you again in just a little bit on "morning joe." still ahead, we're continuing to follow the latest on that mass shooting out of california. as we said, trump continues to talk about working with democrats while at the same time warning them not to investigate his administration. contentious. take your razor, yup. alright, up and down, never side to side, shaquem. you got it? come on, get back. quem, you a second behind your brother, stay focused. can't nobody beat you, can't nobody beat you. hard work baby, it gonna pay off. you got this. with the one hundred and forty-first pick, the seattle seahawks select. alright, you got it, shaquem. alright, let me see.

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the news conference is under way about the borderline bar & grill shooting. let's take a listen. >> also on my right is l.d. maples. he's the chief of the coastal division of the california highway patrol. first first name is spelled l.d. last name maples, m-a-p-l-e-s. right now i'll hand it over to sheriff dean to give you the latest. >> good morning. you're all experienced reporters and you understand this is the dynamic of an ongoing investigation and a tragic, tragic situation. so i'll go through the details. i'll share with you everything i have and we'll answer all the questions you may have. our partners from the fbi and highway patrol may answer some additional questions you might have. tonight at 11:20 p.m., sheriff's 911 received multiple calls of shots being fired at the

borderline bar & grill in thousand oaks. our first sheriff's unit arrived on scene three minutes later. there were two highway patrol officers on scene who had been on a local traffic stop and heard the traffic and responded right away. approximately three minutes later, the highway patrol and a sheriff's sergeant made entry into the borderline because they heard shots being fired and felt there might be additional victims inside. upon going through the front door, the sheriff's sergeant was struck multiple times with gunfire. the highway patrol officer stepped back and secured the perimeter until additional officers arrived and he rescued

the sheriff's sergeant out of the line of gunfire. when additional units arrived, including s.w.a.t. personnel, agencies from the oxard police department, the ventura police department, simi police department and additional officers from the highway patrol, they made entry into the borderline bar & grill. they found 11 victims that had been killed. the suspect, who we believe was the only suspect, was dead inside. and there are multiple other victims of different levels of injury inside that were rescued from the scene and taken to local hospitals. in addition to the victims inside and the numbers are upwards of 10 to 12, additional victims with minor injuries fled the scene on their own and took themselves to local hospitales.

we have not identified the suspect yet. our partners from the fbi were on scene almost immediately to help us with identification process. and with crime scene processing. we have no idea if there was a terrorism link to this event or not. as you know, these are ongoing investigations and that information will come out as soon as we're able to determine exactly who the suspect was and what motive he might have had for this horrific event. i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. [ inaudible question ]. >> well, the sergeant helix died at the -- the sergeant passed away at the hospital about an

hour ago. i only mentioned it might be terrorists because that's where we all go these days when we have multiple shootings. i have nothing to lead me to believe or the fbi that there is any terrorism link here but we certainly will look at that option. i'm sorry? [ inaudible question ]. >> what do you thimean by devic? there's some initial reports that a smoke bomb might have been used. we have not found anything yet. we have called in our bomb team to go through and we have a couple of bomb dogs here that are checking the area. but we haven't found any other explosive device or confirmation that there was a smoke device. [ inaudible question ]. >> hindsight and speculation is pretty easy. you would think if someone throws a smoke device that it was a planned attack and not something spontaneous.

[ inaudible question ]. >> sergeant hillis was on the force for 29 years with, was lo to retire in the next year or so and is a moorepark resident and survived by his wife and his son. ron helus, h-e-l-u-s. [ inaudible question ]. >> the question is what do i make of this. i make that it's a horrific incident. it's part of the horrors happening in our country and everywhere. and i think it's impossible to put any logic or sense to the senseless. >> how did the suspect die? >> when the officers made entry, the suspect was already deceased. there are 11 victims. i will not count the suspect as a victim. the suspect and then sergeant helus. >> so 11 victims.

>> 11 victims, the suspect. >> all right. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." we've got live coverage of the breaking news out of california and, of course, all the of the day. we want to continue the coverage of the mass shooting at a popular college town bar in the town of thousand oaks, california. alex witt has been covering the story all morning long along with ayman. what do you have? >> it appears we have 11 people at least having been killed. the ventura county sheriff's department, the spokesman, saying there were 11 down. he was not including the shooter