responder. we wanted them there as soon as possible. we have way too many injuries. there weren t enough supplies. there weren t enough towels, bandages, doctors that we could find. anyone with any kind of experience was chipping in and doing everything they could to help were. i don t know if any local police department is prepared for casualties on this scale. no. we all have simulations and drills. storme, tell us what happened had jason aldean, for people who don t know, he is cup music entertainer of the year. sure. a huge star. when he was ushered off the stage and you were all hiding, what were you all saying to each other? what were those moments like? it was wondering if we were really experiencing we knew in our hearts we were experiencing. that was a real-life terrorist event. these were not just sounds.
authorities are treating this as a likely terrorist event. i want to have bring in to the discussion the information that you have just mentioned which goes to the idea that there was a level of coordination and likely a cell that was involved in this attack. we have the initial event, which was the plowing down of pedestrians, tourists, families on las rambla, which is pedestrianized. it does allow for some vehicle traffic. now a follow-on event in a nearby street with the police, individuals apparently armed. now, as you have been reporting for the last 90 minutes, shepard, they have also shut down the subway systems. based on my experience, covering this area for more than a decade, they shut down commuter systems when they believe they have an ongoing operation. so they are trying to prevent follow-on attacks and they are trying to limit
they are able to get their hands on, and they are trying to determine who he was in touch with, who might have helped him get to the location, who might have helped him escape from the location. there is a lot of working going on now trying to prove it is a terrorist event. i m sure they ll get there. leland: if this is proven to be a terrorist event, hate crime, can the f.b.i. go after some of these groups that he may have been associated with, that he may have gotten inspiration from? there is no question the providing material support statute that is part of the patriot act is a broadly written statute that has been used here in boston on cases i ve worked on. it is a statute that allows the police to utilize any links that they determine between the actor and the people who facilitated his actions to prove the charge of material support. so it s a very powerful weapon
there was coordination there. at the same time, some of the staff were responsible with dealing with the ins the dent and reaching out to officials and law enforcement in virginia. the communications part done separately. the if we were to play it back, you can almost see where the president ad libbed walking over to say hello and shaking the hand of the veterans at a time when he knew the national spotlight was on him. he did not appear comfortable talking about this. that s just the sense that i had having observed him many times and he has not had lots of experience dealing with sort of emotional, raw, life and death issue where there is violence in the country. one of the questions was is this a terrorist event. was a weapon, car turned into a weapon today as terrorism, some may judge it to be b that, when all the facts are known and that s not something that he addressed. so, this is a challenge for the president. and what i ve meant by that is that it is not an area where
appearing to make an arrest, any information about whether that was connected to this ongoing situation that they re now calling a terrorist event? reporter: ana, it s not possible to know at this stage. he was standing, his hands were behind his back. poe lice were surrounding him. they didn t appear to be armed. they did move him away from the scene quickly. in a situation like this it s difficult to know were they moving him away because he had been obstructing him or because they believed he had been involved, simply because this was the only way they could get him to leave the scene. it isn t clear and typically what we see evolving in terror attacks in britain is the police here are particularly careful and controlled with the amount of information they release. they tend to release information