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Police Say Female Suspect Dead, Several Wounded After Shooting At YouTube HQ

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

At 12:46 Pacific time, numerous 911 calls began to come into the San Bruno Police Department in Northern California. People were reporting gunshots at the headquarters of YouTube. Police arrived to chaos, people running out of a building. Rachel Morgan's husband, Lee, a software developer at YouTube, was one of them.

RACHEL MORGAN: He called me and he's like, I'm OK. I just want you to know I'm OK before you hear any news. And I'm like, OK. What's going on? He goes, there's an active shooter at my work. He was really upset, but he's like, I'm OK. And he was just trying to get as far away from the building as he could.

KELLY: Moments ago, Police Chief Ed Barberini provided this update.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ED BARBERINI: We have four victims who have all been transported for gunshot-related injuries. And we have one subject who's deceased inside the building with a self-inflicted wound that at this time we believe to be the shooter, but we're still following up on that.

KELLY: All right. NPR's Nate Rott is on the line now with more. Hi, Nate.

NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.

KELLY: What more do we know at this point about the shooter?

ROTT: We really don't know much - I mean, just that she is a woman. They have not given out any other information at this time, if - you know, if she was an employee or related to the company in any way, if there was - they have - we're not even in the beginning stages of figuring out a motive here. I mean, it is I guess somewhat remarkable that she is a woman because a lot of times in these mass shootings, as you well know, the perpetrators are usually men.

KELLY: Right, indeed. What about the other victims that we just heard Police Chief Barberini refer to there? What do we know about them?

ROTT: So we talked to a spokesman at the San Francisco General Hospital. He said that one of the victims is a male who's 36. He is said to be in critical condition. Another is a 32-year-old woman who is in serious condition. And the last is a 27-year-old woman who we are told is in fair condition. I should say, though, you know, with these sort of incidents, they're so fluid and things can change so fast, so those are the initial numbers, the initial information that we have, but these things do change.

KELLY: Always a really important point to emphasize as these situations tragically continue to unfold. What more can you tell us about what is actually happening on site at YouTube headquarters right now? We've been watching video footage of people coming out of the building, being evacuated. What's going on?

ROTT: So authorities say that the building is now completely evacuated. Everybody that was there has left and that the authorities are now clearing the building. They're going through and searching it. Google says that there are about a thousand people who work in that facility. And they are - they say they are working with authorities and will provide any information they can when they have it. But that's really all we know from this scene there. I know that, as you described, it's been a chaotic scene, and people are outside talking to folks who have been evacuated and all that.

And we've heard from some of those people with some of the reporters that we have up there on the ground. Tonya Mosley, the Silicon Valley bureau chief for our member station KQED, said she talked to an engineer who had heard a fire alarm, ran out of his office and saw a man on the ground with what appeared to be gunshot wounds. So I would assume that that would have been one of the victims that we are talking about.

KELLY: And, Nate, for those of us who are not in California, can you give us just a little bit more sense of the geography here where exactly this headquarters is?

ROTT: Yeah. So this is in San Bruno. Anybody that's flown into San Francisco International Airport, it's just to the west of that, so a little south of San Francisco. And, you know, that whole area is highly populated. It - there's - it is kind of Silicon Valley area.

KELLY: OK. That's NPR's Nate Rott reporting there on this still, as you said, very unfolding, very fluid situation at the headquarters of YouTube. Nate, thanks so much.

ROTT: Yeah, thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Nathan Rott is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk, where he focuses on environment issues and the American West.