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American Morning

Texas Killer Captured; Pirates Attack Cruise Ship; Daring Water Rescue

Aired November 07, 2005 - 07:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, there's somebody here on the desk from Minerva, Ohio, and she knows a little something about tornadoes, right?
KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And it's not me.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: No, no, no, no, no. No, I do.

MILES O'BRIEN: So tell me about tornadoes when you were growing up. You had quite a few trips to the cellar?

COSTELLO: Actually, we did. And having covering a lot of tornadoes in my career, it's weird how they jump around because, you know, they could destroy one home and then jump over the next one and destroy the one like three doors down. Very strange.

WALLACE: I know. Which is what we saw happen here in Evansville.

MILES O'BRIEN: Rather capricious. So would you get the weather radio?

COSTELLO: All right, I'll get the weather radio.

MILES O'BRIEN: Thank you. Because Casey Lockhart (ph) said, I don't need that darn thing. I still would have been dead. I'd have been in the basement.

COSTELLO: That's what brought up the farmer, because you can't argue with a farmer.

MILES O'BRIEN: No.

COSTELLO: I know. I know. But hopefully he'll change his mind and get one.

WALLACE: Exactly. Important stuff.

Well, you guys, we're going to begin with the news and that is the situation in Evansville, Indiana, where rescue crews are still working back searching through the debris after one of the deadliest tornadoes in that area. A young woman was found alive Sunday carried out on a wall that was once part of her trailer. The tornado ripped through the city in the middle of the night killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 200 others. French President Jacques Chirac is pledging to clamp down on the country's worse civil unrest in at least a decade. Rioters burned some 1,400 cars overnight. Groups also hurled flaming Molotov cocktails at churches and schools. And there are also now some reports coming in that at least one person has died in this unrest, becoming the first fatality in the 11 days of violence.

In Iraq now where U.S. Marines and Iraqi troops are clashing with insurgence in a house to house offensive. It is the third day of the mission near the Syrian border called Operation Steel Curtain. A CNN producer embedded with the troops says they are expecting fierce resistance with insurgents planning booby-traps inside homes and ling the streets with explosive devices. Since Saturday, at least one Marine has been killed in that fighting.

President Bush is in Panama for the last leg of his trip to Latin America. The president and the first lady arrived last night. The next hour, Mr. Bush and Panama's leader, Martin Torrijos, will meet to discuss a pending free trade agreement. Some groups opposing the visit are expected to rally this afternoon but the crowds are not expected to resemble the violent masses we saw in Argentina last week. The president is heading back to Washington later today.

And the Philadelphia transit strike is apparently over. Officials say service should be restored by the afternoon rush hour. Good news for the folks there. Some 400,000 daily riders were affected after thousands of union members walked out last week. Pennsylvania's governor, Ed Rendell, says negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract. Both sides still need to sign off on the agreement. There was clearly a lot of frustration in Philadelphia. A week, commuters having to find other ways to get to work.

COSTELLO: Not easy.

WALLACE: Not easy. They couldn't say, I'm staying home sick. They had to go to the office.

MILES O'BRIEN: It would be a nice try.

All right, thank you very much, Kelly.

Fugitive Charles Victor Thompson, who was a death row inmate in Texas and managed to make his way out of the Harris County lock-up in Houston, Texas, now once again back behind bars. He was caught yesterday, rather intoxicated, in front of a liquor store, Daiquiris Unlimited it's called in Shreveport, Louisiana. About 200 miles from where he managed to make his way out. And that's what brings us to our next guest. Lt. John Martin is with the Harris County Sheriff's Office in Houston. He joins us from outside the jail where this all happened.

Lt. Martin, good to have you with us.

How could this possibly have happened? Just walk us through the events. LT. JOHN MARTIN, HARRIS COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT.: Well, you know, again, it's almost unfathomable that someone on death row would be able to just walk out of a jail. You know, there was no force used. He did not have a weapon. And essentially there were a series of lapses. A number of errors that all came together that allowed him to escape custody.

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, let's talk about the lapses. He made his way into a booth where he was supposed to be meeting with an attorney. Turns out it probably wasn't his attorney, right?

MARTIN: Well, no, it was not his attorney of record. It was not the attorney that helped him with his appeal. But when you say he made it to an attorney booth, he was escorted to an attorney booth. And any time an inmate has a attorney visit, a deputy would takes him out of his cell, put him in any attorney booth. Now the door to that booth should have been locked and he should not have been able to exit that booth by himself. So him being out of his individual cell and in the attorney booth is not necessarily something that we're concerned about.

MILES O'BRIEN: All right. But the door was open. And what is the procedure? Should a death row inmate always be in leg shackles, for example?

MARTIN: Well, that's exactly right. Any time he's taken out of his cell block, regardless of where he's going, he should be handled with the utmost caution. And again, there's a number of lapses that ultimately allowed him to escape custody.

MILES O'BRIEN: All right. So he had handcuffs on, is that correct?

MARTIN: That is correct. He was handcuffed, all though the handcuffs were placed in front of his body, which would allow him to sign any illegal papers he may be asked to sign. And while in was in the attorney booth, we know that he changed out of his inmate jump suit, he put on civilian clothing and he did manage to get out of the handcuffs. What I wonder at this point . . .

MILES O'BRIEN: Why were civilian clothes in that booth? How did that happen?

MARTIN: Well, again, that should never have happened. We know that the clothing were the items he wore to his last court appearance. He had the khaki pants and a dark blue shirt. And apparently he smuggled that clothing back to his cell block. It's not clear at this point if he had them under his jumpsuit, which I think is unlikely. More likely, he had them folded up in some type of a file with his legal papers.

MILES O'BRIEN: So he was allowed to carry legal papers. This is all part of -- he was being re-sentenced.

MARTIN: Yes. Right.

MILES O'BRIEN: And he could have stashed the clothes in there.

Clearly -- OK, so the clothes change. And then I want to get one more important point out here. Because once he gets out of that attorney's booth he still has to do, quote, go through quite a few fences, so to speak, before he can get out. He managed to use his prison I.D. and made it look as if it was an I.D. that would come from the attorney general's office. Is that correct?

MARTIN: Well, he was -- it was his -- identification card issued by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It has his picture on it. It has the state seal on it. But it also says offender across the front of it. He had used a piece of tape to cover up the word offender, showed that to our deputies and he just made the claim verbally that he was with the attorney general's office. If, you know, if you didn't get a really good look at that I.D. card, it could be pretty convincing.

MILES O'BRIEN: Lieutenant, this is a death row inmate. It's more than embarrassing. It's really scandalous that he got out. What do you have to say to people? I man it's good that he's been captured this morning. We're all happy about that. But this is a very serious situation. What will happen at your jail? Will there be people held accountable?

MARTIN: Well, you know, we acknowledged responsibility for it the day that it happened. You know, and basically we moved on from there. We said, look, this happened. Of course, we're embarrassed about it. Certainly not something we can take pride in. And from that moment we got very busy trying to locate him, trying to get him back into custody.

We also have an extensive investigation going on right now. We have several members of our internal affairs division who are contacting any employee that either came into contact with him during his escape or had information regarding the escape. Spoke with several inmates. We're speaking with any witnesses that we've been able to identify. And, you know, whether or not someone's held accountable, which I imagine someone would be, that will be determined at the conclusion of the investigation.

MILES O'BRIEN: But you're going to tighten up your act there, I hope?

MARTIN: We already have. But, you know, one of the things that we're going to be doing is not only looking at, what procedures do we have in place that either we're not followed or we're not following as much as they should have been, but also, do we need to implement additional measures to keep this from happening again.

MILES O'BRIEN: All right, thanks for your time, sir. Lieutenant John Martin with the Harris County Sheriff's Office there in Houston.

Carol.

COSTELLO: Talk about a vacation you'll always remember or maybe it's one you will want to forget. Terror on the high seas. Pirates attack a cruise ship off the coast of Somali. The ship's crew was able to fend off the attack. The passengers escaped unharmed. One of them, Norman Fisher, saw the attack from aboard the cruise ship.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Norman, when the ship came under attack, were you awake?

NORMAN FISHER: Yes, I was. I had been awake for about 10 minutes when I heard what sounded like a crack from outside the window. I had no idea what it was. I looked out the window and saw the boats with what it looked -- I wasn't sure whether it was four or five men in it. And one of them was clearly firing -- well, some kind of rifle. Looked like he was firing it into the air, but I wasn't quite sure at that point.

COSTELLO: So what did you do, Norman?

FISHER: Well, another one of the men was waving. And I just wondered whether this was some kind of rather strange welcome that these people had come across us out to sea and were sort of, you know, saying hello. Saying hi. But it was only when then he started using the rifle and pointing it towards the ship that I realized that, well, no, that wasn't quite right.

A couple of minutes later, the captain suddenly came over the speaker system saying, stay inside, stay inside, we are under attack. Because by then it was obvious that they were firing the gun. There were two of them actually with rifles. I believe they were AK-47s, I now believe anyway, firing toward the ship. And at that point also, I noticed -- I saw that one of the others was carrying what looked like a rocket launcher.

COSTELLO: Yes, there were reports that RPGs were being used.

So the captain is telling everybody to stay in their rooms for a time because he doesn't want everyone to run up on deck and be, you know, exposed to these people.

FISHER: Absolutely. The normal thing in an emergency, of course, is to use the alarm bells but he wouldn't do that because then that would have caused us all to run up on deck, which would have been the most dangerous place of all.

COSTELLO: While all of this is unfolding, what did you think might happen?

FISHER: Well, I suppose -- when I saw the flash of the rocket launcher as it fired, that's when I, obviously, I started to get a little concerned, if I can use a bit of understatement. I could see it wasn't being fired directly at me, but it seemed to be a little bit above and to one side. And, in fact, it hit the suite on the deck above me and one or two along. At the time, I hadn't realized that the ship had actually been hit. But the captain told us all, again, one of his announcements, to go into the ding room, which is a little lower down in the ship and only has fairly small portholes and, therefore, we'd be far less visible, in fact, less vulnerable.

COSTELLO: Norman Fisher, thank you for joining us this morning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Well, if you're wondering how the ship got away, the captain of that ship actually ran into the small boats where the pirates were armed, trying to knock some of them over and then he just like full speed ahead and outran them and that's the only way they got away. But everybody is safe this morning. And as for Norman, he's coming home today.

Let's head to Atlanta now to check on the weather. Jacqui Jeras is in the CNN Center.

Good morning, Jacqui.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: Coming up, an SUV plunges off of a bridge and into Tampa Bay. A family of four inside that vehicle. We'll meet one of the brave strangers who dove into the water and saved them all.

MILES O'BRIEN: Didn't even think about it. In they went. In they went and saved the family.

Plus, you may not have to take out a loan to fill up your tank anymore. Good news at the pump, even if you own the Yukon XL, as I do, the rolling zip code. Ahead, more on that on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MILES O'BRIEN: Quite a story coming to us out of Tampa Bay. The Howard Franklin Bridge in Tampa Bay actually goes across the bay six miles or so. Take a look at it quickly. We'll just show you what we're talking about here. A six-mile stretch of I-275 from the globe down to Tampa we go. And across the bridge. And what happened there over the weekend is something. An SUV with a family on board driving this direction from St. Pete toward Tampa. And they get over what's called the hump area, that is the middle portion of the bridge, fairly high up there. And just at this spot, they went into the drink. Among the people who happened to happen by, thank goodness for that, was Kelli Earle, who was, in particular, responsible for rescuing seven-year-old Jamar Jakupovic (ph).

Kelly, first of all, just walk us through it. You drove up. When did you realize what was going on and did you have much time to think or was it just a reflex reaction?

KELLI EARLE, RESCUED 7-YEAR-OLD BOY: It was more or less a reflex reaction. As we pulled up, I was actually not on scene when the actual accident occurred. But everybody started to pull over and you could, obviously, see the panic on everyone's faces.

As I parked my car, seeing if anybody would need any medical assistance, you know, looked over the side of the bridge and you see just bubbles coming up to the surface. You see three people that had surfaced to the top of the water, which we later learned were the mother, father, and teenaged son of the Jakupovic family. The father was screaming about something and no one could really make out what it was. We later learned that there was someone still trapped inside.

That's when an absolutely courageous gentleman, his name's Kerry Reardone (ph), dove off the span of the Howard Franklin head-first into the water. As he dove of, probably he was down for about 30 seconds. We saw, of all things, an Adidas soccer cleat float up to the surface of the water. You know that signaled to myself and many that, you know, that he was there. As he surfaced to the water, he had in his arms a very lifeless, limp little boy named Omar, that we later learned.

MILES O'BRIEN: Wow.

EARLE: Instinct just kicks in. So knowing that he'd need that essential, you know, CPR as soon as possible, I dove off the bridge as well and swam over to another fishing boat that had pulled up on scene. I mean, I'm talking an equation of absolutely amazing people that came together. A fishing boat came over when they saw the boat go in. Mr. Reardone dove in the water. and everybody was just amazing.

MILES O'BRIEN: Let me -- I want to clarify your viewers, because you had a set which has the sunshine skyway behind you. A much higher bridge. If you jump off of that, it's curtains. This is a lower bridge. A kind of causeway type distance to the water. You never hesitated, though, to dive in and do what you had to do?

EARLE: No. Children definitely have a special place in everyone's hearts and, you know, just to hear a father and a mother pleading for the life of their child, that appeals to you as a person, not a as a professional. And, you know, you're obligated to help. That's it. It's an obligation.

MILES O'BRIEN: And your medical background is what?

EARLE: I'm a labor and delivery nurse.

MILES O'BRIEN: OK. So you know a little bit about kids, a little bit younger than this.

EARLE: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: As you performed CPR, how quick -- had his heart stopped beating? Did he have quite a bit of water in his lungs?

EARLE: Actually, when they pulled him up on deck, he had no heartbeat and was not breathing. Just attempted the very, you know, basic CPR, giving rescue breaths as I compressed his chest. Exactly what you said. All the fluid that was in his lungs and in his stomach and what not did escape, along with what was left of his lunch.

MILES O'BRIEN: Oh, my goodness gracious. But that's the least of your worries at that point. Let's just listen to the mom, Amira Jakupovic, and see what she had to say to one of our local affiliates there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMIRA JAKUPOVIC, MOTHER OF RESCUED BOY: I want to thank them. I owe them my life. I would give them my life because they saved my son's life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MILES O'BRIEN: You know, Kelli, when you hear something like that, you can't think of a better deed to have done. Has it changed your life?

EARLE: That family will always have a very special part and place in my heart, especially this courageous young boy who I'm ecstatic to report is doing amazing. They expect him to make a full recovery. And, I mean, I think that this story has touched so many people, myself included, and I'm just so humbled and so grateful to have been a part of this effort.

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, you touched us this morning. Kelli Earle, you're giving me goose bumps. Great job. And we're glad you were there for everybody.

EARLE: Thank you, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: For the whole family.

EARLE: Thank you.

MILES O'BRIEN: Good luck to you.

EARLE: Thank you.

MILES O'BRIEN: Carol.

COSTELLO: I'm just kind of speechless after that.

MILES O'BRIEN: I know. It's a tough act to follow. But she's an amazing woman.

COSTELLO: Now just the fear of that, because a lot of people have that fear of driving over a bridge and then plummeting off. I mean, that's a very real fear for a lot of people. And it happens to this family and then all those kind people.

MILES O'BRIEN: The right people were there for them.

COSTELLO: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: All right. We'll be back with more in a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Have you noticed, the price of gas is going down. In fact, it's taken a tumble.

That's hard to believe, Andy.

ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

COSTELLO: But it has.

SERWER: Well, yes, it's true. It's good news. It's good news for everyone who drives those big SUVs that Miles fessed up to just minutes ago. Gas prices falling another 20 cents or so over the past two weeks. Now down at pre-Katrina levels. And big declines are likely over for the time being. They're probably going to continue to fall down.

And, of course, that's good news for the economy. You can see here, $2.38 is the national average. $3.05 was the Katrina high. A year ago, we were still at $2. And as far as oil prices go, Carol, warm weather in the northeast and the rest of the country has pushed oil prices down to $60 a barrel.

And we want to do a couple of gas prices across the country. Miami has the highest prices now. That's probably due to Hurricane Wilma and the situation they had there at $2.74. And the lowest price gas price, Tulsa, Oklahoma, were almost down it $2.

COSTELLO: Really?

SERWER: You want to drive all the way out there and fill up your tank? You know that thing -- that almost (ph). We'll (INAUDIBLE).

COSTELLO: Yes, exactly. So that means that congressional investigation into why oil companies aren't giving some of their profits back to the consumers, that will probably die?

SERWER: I think that's going to moot very, very quickly here.

COSTELLO: Yes, I think so too. Yes.

SERWER: They were too late.

COSTELLO: Yes, I think so. Thank you, Andy.

SERWER: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Miles.

Thank you, Andy.

In a moment, a crying baby, long lines, bad food. Ah, the glamour of flying. What's your biggest pet peeve about flying? Oh, so many to list, so little time. We'll give you the official list from Zagat. What airlines are doing well, what airlines aren't and what people are ranting about ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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