The Virginia Beach Police Department had planned to hold an active shooter training on Saturday, City Councilman Michael Berlucchi confirmed to CNN's Don Lemon.
The Police Department had announced the "Active Threat Citizens Defense" event on Facebook. It aimed to "enhance preparedness for citizens to 'rise to the occasion' instead of 'settle to the level of their training,'" according to the Facebook page.
"You can't stop evil, you can only respond to it."Update 22:00 UTC
Joseph Scott, who said he worked with Craddock for several years, saw him in a bathroom at work Friday.Another eyewitness reported:
"He was at the sink, brushing his teeth like he always did," Scott told CNN. "I used the bathroom and walked up and was washing my hands, and I said, 'How are you doing?' He said he was doing OK. "I asked, 'Any plans for the weekend?' And he said, 'No.' And I said, 'Well, have a good day,' and he said the same to me. And it was no more than that."
Scott said Craddock was "what I thought was a good person," and described him as generally quiet.
"When we were together, we would talk about family, friends, things that we were going to do, trips we were going to take and things like that," Scott said.
Craddock's parents, reached Friday night, told CNN they weren't aware of any trouble that he was having with his employer
Edward Weeden, who works in the building, told CNN affiliate WAVY that people heard someone falling in a stairwell and went to investigate. He and his coworkers saw a woman who was down, blood all over her face.This suggests they did not hear any gunfire inside the building, indicating that the gunman used the suppressor the police found on a .45.
Zand Bakhtiari, 28, who works on the first floor of the city building where the shooting happened, looked out his window about 4 p.m. and saw people screaming and running. "I thought they were running to the scene of a bad car accident," he said in a telephone interview late Friday.So yes, there was audible gunfire during the shoot-out - subsequent to the slaying of city employees, presumably - between the gunman and police. But until then, people inside the building had apparently not heard gunfire.
At that point, he had not heard any gunfire. But right after that, his boss, who had just left, called in an order to shelter in place: There was an active shooter. Mr. Bakhtiari and others in his office shut the door and got down.
He then heard 50 to 60 gunshots. "It was a lot of shots," he said. Five or 10 minutes later, a police SWAT team came and led them out. [emphasis Sott.net]
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