First officer at San Bernardino shooting says scene was “surreal”

One of the first officers to arrive on the scene of Wednesday’s massacre at a San Bernadino, Calif. office building could only describe the scene that greeted him as “surreal” Thursday.

“It was something that, although we train for it, it’s something that you’re never actually prepared for”, San Bernardino Police Lt. Mike Madden said at a news conference Thursday night. The investigation into the shooting is still ongoing.

As police around here have been saying these past two awful days, when you hear a call like that everyone with radio attends, not matter what service they work for.

Lt. Mike Madden, an administrative commander for the San Bernardino Police Department and a 24-year veteran, usually holds what most consider as a “desk job”.

He headed for the scene and was one of the first to arrive; as a few others got there, his priority was to put together a team to enter the building.

He said the people poured past them and out of the building as a flood of other first-responders poured in and began helping the injured and clearing the building.

“It was extremely loud”.

“When we entered, there was fresh gunpowder, and the smell of gunpowder in the air, leading me to believe that there were, in fact, shooters still…”

In pursuit of active shooters who might have been around any corner, they had to tune out the wails and moans of the injured and a blaring fire alarm.

Madden told reporters he could tell the large room was being used for a party. Bodies lay in a room with a Christmas tree and festive decorations.

“These people were going into their holiday festivities and now they were dealing with that”. Burguan said 18 of the 21 who were wounded were county employees, as were 12 of the 14 killed in the attack.

“This was tragedy that I’ve never experienced in my career, and I don’t think most officers do”, he said. “Come to us”.” First one survivor came, then the others streamed out. Finally, one person moved, and it was a rush.

Responding to the immediate Internet backlash from the San Bernardino shooting, he said, “I went in those comments, and you can see, ‘Oh, religion”.

Lieutenant Madden described how further into the building around 50 people had take refuge in a corridor and did not want to follow his orders to leave.

“The situation was surreal”, Madden said, recalling what he witnessed inside a conference room.

“There were people who were obviously injured, and obviously in great amounts of pain”, Madden said.

Authorities say they are still not sure of the shooters’ motive, but terrorism likely was part of the killers’ plan.

He said: “These people have already dealt with enough”.

According to the biography on the police department’s website, he “was born and raised in San Bernardino and always had a desire to serve the community he was raised in”.

Weapons carried by the suspects in the mass shooting Wednesday in San Bernardino, California.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department released crime scene photos Thursday from Wednesday’s deadly shooting via social media, “Photos from the scene of the officer involved shooting”.