this is cnn breaking news. . i m victor blackwell, thank you for staying with us. we are of course covering the breaking news, this man hunt happening right now for the man who opened fire at a july 4th parade in highland park, illinois. he s described as armed and dangerous. at least six people are dead. more than two dozen have been taken to hospitals. now, a briefing a short time ago, police described this suspect. the suspect is currently described as a male, white, approximately 18 to 20 years old with longer black hair, a small build and wearing a white or blue t-shirt. a firearm has been recovered from the scene. it does appear he was shooting from a roof. the roof that he was shooting from, i don t have that information right now. we now know that the fbi is assisting in this investigation. and authorities are asking of course anyone with video to contact highland park police. we ve known the video in situations like this has been crucial. cnn s adrienne broad
regard is probably underway right now. i would expect that we will see some progress or some developments on this in the next few hours. chris, without a terror nexus and the commissioner not investigating this as an act of terror, is this still led by nypd? we have seen a myriad of law enforcement agencies here on scene. is this a new york city police department investigation primarily? i think it is at this point. the fbi is always going to be on the scene of a mass casualty event like this, particularly involvie involving a subway, which is a terrorist target. if it transitions to a terrorist event, you make a smooth transition over to the fbi s lead. right now, they are participating with n uunified command. everybody is there. nypd is in charge right now. that could change later, but
this was someone who was embraced and had been vetted through the process that exists, nearly a thousand saudis are in similar positions in bases across this country. now they re wondering whether this was possibly terror related. what was your take given right now what you heard the sheriff say that the head of the fbi has been briefed and the fbi the lead agency tonight. obviously, the question is, of course, motivation and here s what s interesting about this case, is he s been here for two years. so the vetting process clearly took place two years ago and what the dod vets for his drug use, criminal behavior or terror nexus, that is a defense department review and we re not dependent on the saudis for that or any other country. once the review happens, the person is then considered vetted, but he s been here for two years and i m being careful for motivation at this stage because a lot happens in two years.
detained? we were told from london police that there was somebody in custody or detained. no, but what i assume is, just like previous incidents, they are on top of things and from what we understand is there was some sort of commotion, some sort of fight happening further up the bridge, which we now heard was somebody with a knife, basically, attacking people, and that police shot the attacker. but, again, this is all speculation. this is what we know from social media. nobody in here actually was out there to see it. noah, we talked about the incident that happened in 2017. people in the uk are no stranger to different types of attacks, terror attacks. we don t know what this is just yet, ifs there any kind of terror nexus, but i imagine you re a little on guard, in a police with a lot of tourists. you mentioned being at this cafe
but again, we have to indication that there was any terror nexus here. there were no other injuries that we know of at this point in time to anyone in the building or on the ground. and i want to just say, thank god for that. this could have been a much worse incident. and thank god no other people were injured in this absolutie i shocking, stunning incident. i want to lastly say that the first responders performed an extraordinary effort here. i want to thank the fire department, police department, everyone, all the buildings department, all the agencies that responded here, oem, everybody. this was a very challenging situation that you re going to hear from the commissioner, a fire on the roof that had to be dealt with immediately. fdny did an exception job addressing the situation. with that, i want to turn it to our fire commissioner, dan