have to be answered. those early interviews now, in these first hours of the tragedy, are going to be critical in figuring out who this guy was. what could possibly have motivated him to do that. according to pierre thomas, our justice correspondent, there s not i repeat, not a link to any radical domestic sorry, radical terrorist groups now. they re going to investigate whether there s a link to some domestic groups. and this does fulfill a fear that i know we have all had as americans, that we ve reported on extensively here at abc news. that is the growing proliferation of lone wolf terrorist in this country. we could be looking, could be looking at another example of that. again, lots of questions. you can imagine what besides those alleged explosives, what was in that apartment and what did his neighbors, friends, classmates, whoever, possibly know. a massive effort, 250 local officers from across metro, as clayton sandel who s going to join us again. 100 fbi agents. anyth
so federal authorities and local law enforcement authorities have evacuated that residence while they check it for possible explosives. they say that the scene here is now secured. again, as many as 50 people may have been hit. and the chief confirming that there are 14 dead at this time. clayton, is the chief confirming anything about these victims? do we know of any children that were involved? reporter: he s speaking now. let me see if i can get him live again. certainly. while clayton listens in, let us recap. a flood of new information from the scene, from the police chief, talking again. deadly attack at a movie theater in aurora, colorado. 20 injured, ten dead. now the numbers have gone up, maybe 50 people may have been hit. 14 confirmed dead. clayton, can we actually hear what the chief is saying now on the phone? clayton may be listening figure that out. we ve mobilized our entire victims services unit, and all
apparently the gunman was in theater nine and opened fire. jack was apparently in a nearby theater, in eight, with a child. we talked about this earlier. they thought it was part of the movie, thought someone was playing a joke, setting off firecrackers. they don t know it was the real thing. it happened during a scene that was laden with special effects, people couldn t distinguish between what was happening in the movie and happening in real life or perhaps they thought it was a something inside the theater to coincide with the movie as something like that. there was utter confusion and for many folks, realizing it was too real, it was too late. clayton, i didn t know if you were able to hear any of the eyewitness account. reporter: i could hear a little bit of that. and that tracks with some of the reports i was hearing earlier when we were driving in. some of the witnesses on the radio saying that very similar things about how this all about how this all began, yeah. and
on thun belieng coordinated attack? reporter: at this point, we simply do not know. as you said, it is just too early. most people are just now arriving here on the scene. so they are for sure trying to sort that out at the moment. at this point, we don t know. clayton, there was one report out there, we want to know if you ve been able to confirm that the gunman basically let off some teargas, put on their masks, and basically opened fire with basically semiautomatic weapons s. there any truth to that report, happened about 30 minutes into the movie? reporte: well, we haven t heard anything official in that regard. i ll tell you, in any situation like this obviously, and chaos inside the theater. guns themselves obviously give off a lot of smoke. so it s not clear, it s not clear what happened in this theater.
but lights are off in the parking lot. there are a few police officers walking in and out of the theater adjacent to the theater. there s a very large couple of mobile command centers that have been set up. making my way over now. i would imagine that the scene is taped off. you have to imagine that family members that know that their relatives were at the theaters are probably now starting to gather, clayton. how close are they are they able to get to the scene? are the police doing a good job of keeping everybody out of the fray and away from the crime scene? reporter: to give you an example, i ve just been kicked out of the area that i was trying to get. to so i m just coming into contact with some officers who are getting ready to do a briefing here for us. so we hope to get a little more information. maybe we can perhaps do this over the phone. we ll see. keep us posted.