First officer on scene of San Bernardino massacre: 'It was unspeakable'

Mike James | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Officer at San Bernardino massacre: 'It was unspeakable' Police Lt. Mike Madden was the first police officer on the scene of the San Bernardino shooting that left 14 people dead. Hear him emotionally recall what he saw. Video by desertsun.com

With the smell of gunpowder in the air and mortally wounded people wailing in agony, San Bernardino Police Lt. Mike Madden burst into a conference room at the Inland Regional Center.

Madden, one of the first police officers to charge into the massacre Wednesday that left 14 dead and 21 wounded, then saw something that made the scene even more "surreal."

"There was a Christmas tree in there, and all the tables were decorated," said Madden, a 24-year police veteran who was on his way to lunch when he got the call about the shootings. "There are so many families going into this holiday season that are going to be suffering from this senseless act of violence."

Madden's stirring first-hand account of rushing into the building with other officers was aired on national media Thursday. He stoically and professionally described how he and fellow officers could have never been prepared for the scene they witnessed, immediately after a health worker and his wife opened fire on a holiday party with rifles and handguns.

"It was unspeakable, the carnage that we were seeing," said Madden, who went to high school in San Bernardino and said the tragedy really hit home to him. "The pure panic on the faces of the individuals."

Syed R. Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, had amassed a huge arsenal of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices at their residence in nearby Redlands that they drew upon for their attack. But that information wasn't known to Madden as he approached the building.

Amid sketchy initial reports over the police radio of attackers in the building, Madden said he knew something "real" was happening.

"I know my dispatchers, I know the tone of their voice. This was a real event," Madden said, recalling how he had been trained for such horrific incidents ever since the Columbine attacks. As he headed toward the building, he said he thought to himself, "We have an active shooter in our city."

The planned party at the Inland center, a social services facility, was to follow training for county workers that morning, said San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan. He said 91 people were invited and about 75 to 80 showed up, including Farook, a restaurant inspector who worked for the county.

At some point, Farook left, got his wife, and came back. The pair, wearing body armor and heavily armed, began systematically firing into the crowd, Burguan said.

Madden arrived within about four minutes of when police dispatchers were first notified that a shooting was underway, Burguan said — an extraordinarily fast response time.

Madden said that "there was the smell of fresh gunpowder in the air" as he and another first responder began looking for shooters. A fire alarm was blaring and sprinklers were going off, he said.

"There were victims who were clearly deceased outside the conference room," he said. He radioed for more help. He said he pushed forward and went deeper into the building, down a hallway where he had to pass "people obviously in great amounts of pain."

He said he had to pass them because the immediate "goal was to find the shooter or shooters . . . we had to bring some kind of calm to the chaos." Moments later, he and the handful of officers who arrived behind him found about 50 terrified people in a back hallway.

It posed a tactical dilemma for the officers. First, they did not know whether the shooters might be holed up within the survivors, waiting to shoot at police. Second, the survivors could not be sure that the arriving officers — who were wearing police gear not unlike the military-style garb that the killers were wearing — were actually police.

"They were fearful," Madden recalls. "We had to tell them several times, 'Come to us, come to us'." But there were tense moments where neither the survivors or the police committed to approach the other group.

Finally, a survivor took the first step.

"Once that first person came forward, it opened the floodgates," Madden said.