san antonio. this is from stockdale. it s just been it s just been devastating and what we re seeing now is people finding out little bits of information about where their loved ones have been taken or whether or not they survived, you know. it s just a devastating blow. this is a very small town and with that amount of loss of life in such a tight knit community, this is going to change the whole dynamic of this area. it s very sad. carrie, what did you experience there? i understand you were a witness to all of this. what did you experience? what did you see? tell me anything that you know. what i saw was people coming to the store that i m an employee at and basically congregating in the parking lot trying to find out, you know, from people what s going on and
unity and your as your community and you, but how do you deal with this? it s scary to be here right now. the way we re dealing with it right now. like i said, we have close to 150, 200 people at the community center right now. all together, all the pastors from the local areas are there. prayers being offered up and loved ones are being held tight. there s lots of crying and we re the red cross is there and, you know, people dropped food and donated drinks and stuff. we re just coming together as a community and helping each other through this time because that s all we ve got is each other. carrie matula, thank you for joining us. our thoughts and prayers are with you in our community and even if we re not talking about your town in ten days or two weeks know our thoughts an prayers are with you through all
close. so this is this has been hard. yeah, i can only imagine the feelings and emotions you re going through and what a community you re describing for us. it looks like an absolutely beautiful day in terms of what we re able to see here and in terms of how that all now has changed as a result of this deadly massacre at the first baptist church? southerland springs. have you thought about, carrie, how this changes everything? how you know, in the wake of mass shootings that have happened in other parts of the country, did you ever think that it would happen on the doorstep of your own community? absolutely not. absolutely not. i never thought it would happen here. i mean, this is something that takes place in a big city. you know i would never have thought it would have taken place here. i mean, this is just it s too tight a community.
but most people in texas have a pretty good idea of what long rifles sound like. yeah. and that would tell me that somebody with a semiautomatic long rifle just went in there with the intent to shoot and they just fired until the magazine emptied and fled. could have been a handgun. could have been a handgun with an extended magazine, like a block with a .32 round magazine. we don t know. but for now what we do know is that, you know, this tragedy injured or killed a lot of people. and if it was a long rifle, you have a better chance of injuring and killing a lot more in a crowded environment like that, because the bullet goes through multiple people. so it may have been focused. it may have just been personal. we just don t know. there s just so much information. that s absent now. i want to actually play a sound bite, because we ve been talking a lot about this community, and how an attack like this crime like this, can impact the psyche of the community. let me play the soun
to about what kind of community this is. take a listen. it s really going to change the community. there s you know, like i said, people that have lived here their whole lives, and they re just suddenly gone. and in such a tragic manner. and everybody is going to lock their doors now. we don t always lock our doors here. they re going to lock their doors, they re going to bring their car keys in the house. they re going to probably keep a rifle by their bed, just in case somebody decides to copy cat. i mean, this is not the way we think and we live out here. so clint, you know, we we ve talked about this. you just raised the point about security at churches. it s not the way people live here, as you heard, carrie describe. when we look back at the places, so-called soft targets that have been, you know, attacked by mass shooters, movie theaters,