SAN BERNARDINO — (CNN) The hunt for one to three suspects is taking place near a San Bernardino, California, center for people with developmental disabilities, where at least 14 people were killed Wednesday, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told reporters.
Seventeen other people were hurt in the shooting, authorities said.
SWAT teams and the bomb squad were working to clear the buildings where the shootings took place.
CNN affiliate KABC showed images of police activity in a neighborhood on Wednesday. It was unclear whether the operation was tied to a shooting earlier in the day. The images showed a black SUV and a person on the ground.
Sgt. Vicki Cervantes of the San Bernardino Police Department said the scene was a couple of miles from the mass shooting.
“The only thing I know is there were shots fired, officers were involved and there is a suspect is down,” she said. “Whether it’s related or not, we don’t know yet.”
She added: “All officers are OK. Whether or not they were struck, I don’t know.”
Marcos Aguilera received a text from his wife who works at the Inland Regional Center.
“She heard the shots and crying,” he said. The situation became confusing when the fire alarm went off. “Everyone was confused,” he said, relating his wife’s account. A SWAT team eventually rescued his wife and two other co-workers. “When she exited the building, she said there were multiple bodies on the floor,” Aguilera told CNN.
The suspects were armed with long guns, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told reporters. “These were people that came prepared. … They were armed with long guns, not hand guns,” he told reporters. Most of the victims were “centrally located in one area of the facility,” Burguan said. Police didn’t exchange gunfire with the shooters, he added.
“At this point, I know one of your questions is going to be ‘Is this a terrorist incident?’ I will tell you right now we do not know if this is a terrorist incident,” David Bowdich, an assistant director for Los Angeles FBI’s office told reporters.
The shootings were in the conference center at the Inland Regional Center, the center’s executive director, Lavinia Johnson, told CNN. She believes the county’s Department of Public Health was having a holiday party there.
Johnson said the fire alarm went off in her building, and people began to evacuate but then the order came to stay in place. Later police came and took people out of their offices.
The three suspects are believed to be armed with AK-47-type weapons, a local law enforcement official told CNN.
President Barack Obama restated his call for more gun control reforms in the wake of the mass shooting. Speaking to CBS News, Obama said Congress should act in a bipartisan manner to close loopholes, including one that allows people on the TSA no-fly list to legally purchase firearms
Four adults have been transported to Loma Linda University Medical Center, and the hospital is expecting three more patients, hospital spokeswoman Briana Pastorino said. She did not describe the nature of the patients’ wounds. Arrowhead Regional Medical Center has received eight patients, an employee who didn’t want to be named told CNN.
The bomb squad found a suspicious package on the second floor of a building and determined it is “not normal,” a law enforcement source told CNN. They are going to handle it with a robot, the source added.
A woman who works at a building where the shootings occurred texted her father: “Shooting at my work. People shot.” The father told CNN affiliate KABC his daughter told him 10 to 20 people were shot.
The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding, agency representatives said.
Wednesday’s shooting occurred at the Inland Regional Center, a facility for people with developmental disabilities. It is unclear how many people were at the facility at the time of the shooting.
The center’s Facebook page says it employs nearly 670 people at its facilities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, providing service to more than 30,200 people.
It aims to “work on a personal, one-on-one basis with people with developmental disabilities to make their lives better as they define it.” No information is yet available on how many people were at the facility at the time of the shooting.
San Bernardino is a city of just over 200,000 people 60 miles east of Los Angeles. It’s the 17th largest city in California, and the mayor is R. Carey Davis.
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2015 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. (Photo: CNN)
