cedric alexander, if you're still with us, former law enforcement executive and msnbc contributor, we're going to take a quick short break in a second. but i want to get your sense of what you heard there from that particular eyewitness, patrick and what he described to us. >> well, certainly you have his eyewitness account. there are going to be hundreds of eyewitness accounts in terms of what people experienced that night. we're just thankful for those who were able to get out of there and get out safely and get themselves and their families out. but in a case such as this, you know, it's just so horrific in the sense that just imagine hundreds, thousands of people in that festival tonight who heard those gunshots and took off running. trying to make sure they had their family and friends with them, trying to find a place of safety. and, of course, at this point, we don't particularly know how this subject or subjects may have entered into this festivity. certainly they could have walked through the front or they could have came in through some other perimeter way. but this is so horri

cedric alexander joins our conversation here. you know, i think for the layperson here, cedric, you look at this and go we're 30 minutes into sunset right now. boy, does certainly seem if they're looking for a suspect here and the police department is still calling it an active scene, this is -- it's got to be more difficult somehow. >> well, certainly it's going to get difficult the later it becomes because you don't have as much light. but here we are again looking at a scene we've seen so many times before and here you had very innocent people who were out spending their sunday afternoon with family members at the garlic festival, and here we go with another tragic shooting with people injured and possibly people even may have died from this. but, you know, as the night goes on it certainly makes it much more challenging for law enforcement to continue to do their work, but in an effort such as this, in an effort such as this nothing is going to -- >> i want to add this to the conversation. it's an unfortunate confirmation here

. >> cedric alexander also still with us. cedric, what stood out to you from the chief of police? >> well, you know, they were very cautious in term of how much information they needed to share or should share at this time. this is still early in this investigation, as you go into the fifth and sixth hours of this incident. but this is appeared to have been so heart felt for that chief as you mentioned earlier in terms of his relationship to that community. and i think each one of those persons tonight that came up to that podium, you certainly could sense the sadness that they all had and the helplessness that they felt as well too because it is just so, so incredibly hard for any of us to accept this tragedy that we saw there tonight, just such a large number of very innocent, very innocent citizens there in that community who were just out enjoying themselves and their families. but, you know, there's a lot of information still yet to be gathered. but what grabs me the most to your question, what grabs me the most with each one of the speakers that came to that podium is that t