One of the first police officers to respond to deadly shootings at a social service centre in California has spoken of scenes of “unspeakable” carnage.Lt Mike Madden said he and officers who arrived later saw dead bodies and had to pass injured people as they tried to “engage the shooters” on Wednesday.Officials say a husband and wife shot dead 14 people and wounded 21 in the city of San Bernardino.Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, were killed in a shootout.Bomb equipment, weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition were later found in the attackers’ home.The authorities have still not found a motive for the attack.”It was unspeakable, the carnage that we were seeing,” Lt Madden told a news conference.”The number of people who were injured and unfortunately already dead and the pure panic on the face of those individuals that were still in need and needing to be safe.”He said he and other police officers led about 50 people out of the centre’s conference room.
“Then we went further into the building and that was a difficult choice to have to make as well, passing people that we knew were injured and in need of assistance,” Lt Madden said.”But our goal at that time had to be trying to locate the shooters and deal with them.”Police said between 75-80 people were at the centre when the shooting began.The names of the victims have now been released by San Bernardino’s coroner.The youngest victim was 26 and the oldest was 60.
source:BBC
