i never seen anything like this before. we re just praying our co-work es and receptionist folks and everything are all safe. what w . reporter: what was it like inside there? panic, nervous, afraid. wasn t sure if the gunman was going to come up the other floors. they told us to get into the interior offices and lock the doors and everything. so people came up from upper levels, lower levels to the upper levels and we all crammed into offices and locked the doors. caller: how did you hear about this? one of my employees went to lunch and came back up from the lobby and he called us reporter: what happened to him? the gunman pointed the gun at him and told him to be still but he kept going. that s when he called us. that s when the police came
unknown, i ve got to ask you, was it chaotic at all? i mean, what was, again, the atmosphere? i imagine people hear that there may be some gunshots or some kind of crisis situation and now you re all being huddled up to the eighth and ninth floor and then skirted out of the building eventually. i mean discovery handled it very well. they made an announcement over the loud speaker that, you know, there was an incident happening in the building and they wanted us up at the top floors and to stay out of way of the lobby. from there, they tried to keep it pretty kwai pept and most people were pretty calm about it. we were all scared. nobody was yelling or running. what else is around that area. we re look at a live picture. obviously our vantage point is
thank you. reporter: that s paul starks with the montgomery county police department. he said a man came into the lobby. he says it appears the man may have some explosive devices. we are listening in just a second ago to one of the lead police officers on the scene here in silver spring. right now, according to that officer it s not known whether there are individuals, meaning employees, still in the building and if this is a hostage situation. they have not been able to confirm that. what we do know according to that brief interview with the police officer is that the individual is an asian male. his issue is with the discovery corporation then a at least one shot was fire and he has some type of device, perhaps explosives strapped to his body. let s go to derek bartlett a former s.w.a.t. team member, a former sniper. are you there?
desks and offices working and i noticed it came over the p.a. system saying there was a situation in the lobby and to get to an office if you could. and from there, after that, e-mails came out and we started looking out the windows and we saw the police cars starting to block off the corners and heavier and heavier police cars came in. and you talk it upon yourselves to evacuate the building? no. we waited for further instruction. an e-mail came across saying a gunman was in the lobby. people started pulling up police scanners on their iphones. and that s how we got information about what s going on. reporter: i m going to stop you there. because we have more developments. what do you have thomas? right now, we have on the telephone, scott graham. chief graham, explain to us what you have and again, we have to preface this by saying there
what is the security like when you enter that building? what is it like when we enter the building? there s usually a receptionist and a security guard at the front lobby. i imagine there s cameras everywhere. right now you re out of the building. how many with you who were escorted with you out of the building? there are about 1,500 empl employees in the two buildings that are connected to each other. and so i would say a good portion of those people were with me when we got evacuated. what else, if anything, did police tell you, and the others, was happening there? that s all we know really. the police i was just walking over to the press platform right now to find the public information officer because the police won t tell us anymore. but we don t know, you know, we re really concerned obviously