Iowa post office shooting: Employee arrested, 3 people injured

And the suspect was detained at 921, so 11 minutes start to finish before we had the shooter detained. I've been trained. Three people have been injured, two of them by gunfire, and one had a fall injury as trying to get away from the situation inside the building. Two of them self-transported themselves to Mercy Hospital four blocks away, and then one of our officers transported another. So at this time, everybody's in stable condition. We're expecting everybody to pull through. The care is still ongoing at that time. Our investigators in our crimes against persons section are going to lead this investigation. The United States Postal Service, their postal inspectors are going to be the assisting agency on that. In the response, if you've been here, you saw it was a pretty massive response. We had agencies from around the metro, state agencies, county agencies, and all the federal agencies that are here all came to provide their assistance. So it was exactly what we expect in that response. We trained for this. Our active killer training gets us in there fast. We don't wait for TAC teams. The officers are on the street. They all know what to do. We were all part of that. Got in there, got the situation secured, got the victims to the care that they needed and had the suspect in custody. So this is one of those situations where we point to our police department and say that the city is in great hands when it comes to situations like this. You have one of the best trained and best prepared police departments when it comes to these critical incidents. So the investigation part, it's going to take a while. We're uh we're working through that right now. A lot of questions came in about what the suspect's motive was. We don't have any information on that right now. There's been no statements about motive and the only other thing we can tell you about the suspect is it's an adult female who was an employee of the postal service. Can you expand a little bit on how the suspect was detained? So the suspect had actually gotten out of the building before we were on scene. And the information that we had led us over to the area of right around University Avenue Bridge over the river. And the 5th Judicial District response that was coming spotted her and took her into custody. I'm sorry, Sergeant, can you repeat the suspect was an employee of the... Yes, the suspect was an employee. Current employee? Yes. Yes. Yeah, so when we started getting the calls come in, all the calls were indicating that there was active shooting. 10 to 12 shots is what some people reported being fired on the second floor of the building. So not a public access area. Can you talk about the victims? Were they employees? Yeah. Yeah, so right now all the victims that we've identified are employees. There's two adult females and one adult male. Are they considered management, upper-level management? I don't know that much. Do you know where they were shot? I don't know that much either, but everybody is expected to pull through. Was she on duty today? I don't know that yet either. Were the two people who took themselves to the hospital, were they both gunshot victims or? I don't know how that breaks down right now. Pretty cut and dried. I mean, start to finish 11 minutes. It's unfortunate that this happens, you know, but we're certainly aware of the world that we live in. So we train for this, we prepare for this, and today you got to see it in action. That second floor there, would that be an employee-only place? We'll know tomorrow, tomorrow. The public's down. Yeah. A lot of the details that you guys are interested in, we're certainly interested in as well. That'll probably come tomorrow, and just for everybody's planning purposes, we're tentatively planning a 10 a.m. press conference at the police station. I'm sure you've, I'm sure you have, but a lot of you, if you worked these things before, federal agencies, their comms people work out of Kansas City. So we want to make sure we get them an opportunity to get to Des Moines. So from around the metro, I think it was Pleasant Hill, Altoona, West Des Moines, Polk County Sheriff's Office, and Iowa State Patrol. And then on the federal side, I saw ATF, U.S. Postal Inspectors, and the FBI. And I'm sure there's some other of those alphabet agencies in there because they all work together. And one nice thing about working in a city this size is that we work together quite often. Yeah, so if you go just straight east of the post office there, there's a bridge that goes over the University Avenue Bridge over the river, and there's a bike trail underneath there, and she was spotted down in that area and then detained. There was no resistance. She was detained without incident. Fifth Judicial District. No. I'm going to go in there and try and find out more. How many witnesses have you interviewed? A lot. I don't know how many. I don't know a number on that. But obviously it's the beginning of the work day in a building that size and they've got a huge staff. So there were plenty of people that we wanted to talk to just to get their perspective on what happened and what they saw. So from the minute somebody saw this person walk into the building to come to work to the last thing. It'll be a lot of work for us. We just got to make sure. When you get these cases like this when we get in this investigative mode we just pump the brakes and there's no urgency we just want to make sure we get all the detail that we can and that takes time and we also have to recognize that these people that witnessed this actually experienced something pretty traumatic and we want to make sure that we're working at the pace that they're able to work at. How many people were in the building? Don't know yet. Do you know how many No, I'll get all that from the postal folks, we'll have that stuff tomorrow. I don't believe so. I don't know. You seen anybody come or go? I can't imagine it is. Do you want me to say there's other branches around the city? There's plenty of places you can get your mail. Okay. We're not disrupting that. Rain, sleet or snow or rain or shine, whatever. And we've been listening to this live news conference and update on a shooting that happened 9 o'clock this morning in Des Moines at a postal facility. It sounds like the shooter has been identified, has been arrested, shooting three fellow employees. This person was employed by the post office, a woman. We are told that none of the people who were hurt have life-threatening injuries, so that is good news in that sense. But three people were injured during this shooting. That person who is alleged to have fired the gun, a postal worker, this female had been apprehended right after the shooting. And as you heard the sergeant saying, she was detained without incident and brought in without incident.