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American Morning

Latest From New Orleans on Deadly Confrontation; Sons Bust Dad

Aired December 28, 2005 - 09:32   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The latest from New Orleans on a deadly confrontation. Police there shot and killed a man who was making threats with a knife. The police superintendent joined us earlier on AMERICAN MORNING, and he has just held a news conference. He said his officer is exactly what they were supposed to do.
Susan Roesgen is live in New Orleans to tell us more. Hello, Susan.

SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN GULF COAST CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Carol.

Police chief warren Riley says that home video we've been seeing doesn't tell the full story. He says, yes, there were about 16 officers on the scene, but he says what happened off camera was one lieutenant went up to the man with a knife, now identified as Anthony Hayes, and tried to talk Hayes into dropping the knife. The chief says that's when Hayes lunged at the lieutenant, and three other officers shot and killed Hayes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUPT. WARREN RILEY, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: How does it make me feel? As a manager, as a leader, it's something you realize you just simply have to do. I think the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department should be proud right now. Should they be proud of this incident? We're not proud of the incident. But we're certainly happy that we're not burying a police officer this week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROESGEN: The chief says that he will review the tactics and strategy used in that shooting. The three officer who actually fired their guns are on desk duty. That's pretty standard procedure.

But the chief also told me that he's disappointed that everything the New Orleans Police Department does now is under the national spotlight -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Susan Roesgen, reporting live from New Orleans this morning. Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Well, in Lewiston, Illinois there is a sentencing coming up where 64-year-old Bill Ginglen. He'll be sentenced tomorrow. He was going before a judge with a strange story to tell on how he was captured as an alleged bank robber. Several surveillance pictures came out. Guess who recognized him? His sons, and they turned him in. Gerald, Clay and Jared Ginglen join us to tell us a little bit about their story.

Gentlemen, good to have you all with us. We appreciate you coming

Jared, you are a police officer officer.

OFC. JARED GINGLEN, TURNED FATHER IN: Yes, I am.

O'BRIEN: You were the first one to match the description with your father. Explain how that happened.

GINGLEN: Well, it was just a coincidence really. I was reading the local paper and read a story about some bank robberies over in eastern Illinois. And they gave a description of the bank robber. They didn't know who it was. But the Description and the description of his vehicle, I just got to thinking, that sounded a lot like my father. He had the same kind of vehicle, the description matched, and he spent a lot of time in that area, and it just didn't seem right what I was reading. So I went and checked the Web site, and sure enough, there was pictures of my father robbing a bank.

O'BRIEN: Wow. Was there any sort of behavior, anything unusual your father was doing prior to that that would connect with that description and those crimes?

GINGLEN: Well, he had been out of work for a while. He had lost a job a couple years back and had been doing some different things. We weren't really sure what he was doing. He would be coming to us asking for money a lot. And you know, just a lot of things meshed together made me think that maybe this was possible.

O'BRIEN: Garrett, had you been suspicious of your dad prior to this at all?

GARRETT GINGLEN, TURNED FATHER IN: Actually, no, really not suspicious. Like Jared was saying, he was having some hard times and we were trying our best to help him out. And you know, we helped as much as we could, and that seemed strange, a little bit, because we thought he was working, and yet he still needed financial help. But other than that, no, no suspicions of bank robbery.

O'BRIEN: So, Clay, you're starting to put the pieces together. You all meet at a neutral location. Tell us what that meeting was like and sort of give us a sense of the discussion.

CLAY GINGLEN, TURNED FATHER IN: Well, we got together, and we had a printout of the picture and decided -- excuse me -- there was no doubt that it was him and we needed to stop what he was up to. We did go to try to find him, and we couldn't. So that's when we decided that since we couldn't find him, and he was, obviously, up to no good that our only choice was to get the authorities involved and get a stop put to it.

O'BRIEN: Really. Garrett, when you brought this up, did you immediately, all three of you, agree this was the best course of action, or did you think it might be best to find your father and confront him personally first?

G. GINGLEN: Well, we wanted to confront him. We were going to go to his house and confront him, and hopefully have him turn himself in. If he didn't want to turn himself in, our plan is we would have taken him to turn him in, and we went to his house, and he wasn't home. So we -- the plan was all along that he was going to turn himself in or be turned in.

Jared, you're a police officer. It must be particularly difficult for you. Are you applying a lesson that, ironically, your father taught you here, you think?

J. GINGLEN: Absolutely. We were raised to believe right and wrong and to do the right thing, and when put in this situation, a lot of people would say, what are you going to do? We did the right thing. In our eyes, there was no other choice.

O'BRIEN: Is the right thing for your dad to go to prison, and will you be there for that sentencing?

J. GINGLEN: I will be down there for the sentencing to observe the proceedings.

O'BRIEN: All three of you will be there?

G. GINGLEN: I'll be there.

C. GINGLEN: I won't be there.

O'BRIEN: Who said that?

C. GINGLEN: That's me, clay.

O'BRIEN: Clay. OK, so...

C. GINGLEN: I've just got other obligation that day.

O'BRIEN: But do you think prison is right, just in a word?

J. GINGLEN: Well, I hate to use a cliche, you do the crime, you do the time. He has to pay for what he's done. Whatever they come up with, it's up to the judicial system. But I believe that, you know, there should be some sort of sentence against him.

O'BRIEN: All right, the Ginglen brothers, Clay, Jared and Garrett, who did the right thing with a lot of emotion flying and a lot of family connections flying in their face. Thank you very much -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Coming up, our week-long series on this year's top newsmakers, five in '05. Today How the mother of a fallen soldier helped shape the national debate over Iraq.

O'BRIEN: And later, an update on a furry friend we found the day after Hurricane Rita hit. It's a bittersweet reunion. We'll tell you the story in a bit.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Reporters all over Washington now sifting through some old documents, trying to read the tea leaves, if you will, on where the Supreme Court might be headed should Samuel Alito become the next justice to sit on the high court.

Among those reporters, Bob Franken. You've read everything twice already, huh?

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I have, I have. And if there's a headline in there, it's certainly eluded me. It's not particularly news making, as I've been able to see. The subjects include a discussion about affirmative action in a particular Supreme Court case. No surprise that the Reagan administration and its solicitor general's office, where Alito worked at the time, opposed what was called racial quotas by that administration.

There's a long discussion about a case against the Black Panther Party. Alito is involved in memoranda. But he's only talking about extremely legalistic reasons about an appeal. Did not seem to be any policy matter that would become part of a confirmation process.

And perhaps the most interesting, to give you an idea of how bleak this was, was a long, tortured discussion about whether the wife of the attorney general was eligible for transportation provided by the Justice Department. And I know you're hanging on that one, Miles. The answer, by the way, is no.

O'BRIEN: As you say, I don't hear a headline just yet on that one. All of this kind of goes into the bigger picture, though. Each little piece offers a little bit of a clue. Give us the big picture here. Where does this all stand? When are we going to actually see some hearings?

ALITO: Well, the hearings are going to occurring a week from next Monday on January 9th. And they promise to be contentious. There have been previous memos that have come out. We certainly know his views on abortion are going to be out there. He's expressed strong, strong opposition as an attorney before he went on the court to abortion.

His supporters say that that doesn't necessarily show what he would do as a judge. As a judge, he has followed the dictates of the Supreme Court. His opponents say yes, but when he goes to the Supreme Court, he could vote, if he was so inclined, to overturn Roe Versus Wade. So we're going to hear a discussion once again about that term stare decisis and whether he follows legal precedence or not. So that's the kind of issue that there's going to be a fight about, certainly not anything that I saw today.

O'BRIEN: All right. I love it when you talk Latin, Bob Franken. Thank you very much -- Carol.

COSTELLO: To our number three in our "Top Five in '05," Cindy Sheehan, a grieving mother who lost her son in Iraq. She took her opposition to the war directly to the western White House. Love her or hate her -- and many do -- she has forced the nation and President Bush to take a long, hard look at the war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CINDY SHEEHAN, ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST: When I went down there, I didn't set out to say, I want to, you know, have this media circus here in Crawford, Texas. I went out there to confront the president.

COSTELLO (voice-over): But a media circus and a national movement is what she got. Love Cindy Sheehan or loathe her, the one thing that was almost impossible to do in 2005 was to ignore her. It's a fact some believe President Bush found out the hard way.

SHEEHAN: I feel as if we're having an impact here, yes.

COSTELLO: In August of this year, a grieving mother whose son was killed in action in Iraq traveled to Mr. Bush's ranch in Texas with one goal, to ask him why.

SHEEHAN: I just snapped and it just was a total spur of the moment thing. It was just like, I had just had it. Enough was enough. I was frustrated.

COSTELLO: Sheehan picked up the nickname "The Peace Mom" and her vigil quickly became a worldwide spectacle and a P.R. problem for the president. In the meantime, she had herself became a human lightning rod. The target of both glorification...

CROWD (singing): Singing for our love.

COSTELLO: And vilification.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to be willing to fight for freedom.

COSTELLO: She was accused of being co-oped by the far left, a label she seemed to do little to shake by traveling to the White House and allowing herself to be dragged away in handcuffs during a protest. If anything, Sheehan, who was a self-proclaimed pacifist, is unapologetic.

SHEEHAN: What I understand about that is that they can't attack my message so they try and attack me. When I called George Bush a lying bastard, people say, do you regret that and do you wish you didn't say it? No, I don't, because he lied and he killed my son.

COSTELLO: Looking back, that's something Sheehan now fears might have gotten lost in all of this noise, the story of her son. The story of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan.

SHEEHAN: Casey was my best friend. Well, he was -- I'm sorry. This is a really hard time of year too.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place. I also have heard the voices of those saying pull out now. I just strongly disagree.

COSTELLO: But that wasn't enough to satisfy Sheehan. She says she plans to return to Crawford at Easter. That her fight is not over.

SHEEHAN: Casey's life, he led an honorable life, and Casey's death will stand for peace, you know? And it will stand for love. I won't let it be remembered for killing and lies. I won't let it be in vain.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): For you I'll do anything.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And tomorrow in our series "Five in '05," we'll look at the life and death of Terri Schiavo.

"CNN LIVE TODAY" is coming up next. Daryn, what are you working on this morning?

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We have a busy two hours, Carol. An unlikely mission for U.S. soldiers in Iraq. They are trying to save the life of a 3-month-old girl who has spina bifida. You're going to from one of the soldiers who's trying to get Baby Noor here to Atlanta, Georgia, for life-saving surgery.

And then, have you heard about this? Shoplifting gangs. They're professional thieves. They're able to bring in $40,000 of stolen goods in just a single hour.

Those stories and more, ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY.

COSTELLO: What? $40,000 in a single hour?

KAGAN: And you thought you could do some shopping, girlfriend.

COSTELLO: Oh, my gosh!

KAGAN: That even beats you.

COSTELLO: Yes, it does.

KAGAN: And you pay for the stuff.

COSTELLO: I did. Maybe that's my problem. Thank you, Daryn.

O'BRIEN: Coming up, an update on a story we brought you a few months ago. Remember that dog we found in the wreckage of Hurricane Rita?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She just crawled into my lap. And, honestly, if she had had arms to hug me, she would have. She just crawled up and pressed against me and was just so sweet. And I really just fell in love with her immediately. (END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: That's producer Dana Garrett, who adopted the dog. She named her Sunny and she came home to Westchester County, New York. But that's not the end of the story. Stay tuned and we'll tell you what happened, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET REPORT)

O'BRIEN: And now the story of the pitiful pup and the producer who loved her. In September, we hope you saw the rescue. And now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN (voice-over): It was the morning after Hurricane Rita. We had just weathered the storm at the police station when, shortly after dawn, we heard a whimper amid the wreckage of a storage shed.

(on camera): There he is. Don't let him go. Don't let him go.

He's OK. He's just scared and wet.

(voice-over): It was a spontaneous moment, which later provided some grist for Jon Stewart.

(on camera): And we'll make sure the job gets back to his rightful owner.

JON STEWART, "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART": This story has a happy ending. Miles O'Brien was adopted by a nice family in Baton Rouge.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): Truth is, for producer Dana Garrett, it was love at first sight.

DANA GARRETT, CNN PRODUCER: When she came out of that crate, she was so forlorn looking, and she just crawled into my lap. And honestly, if she had had arms to hug me, she would have. She just crawled up and pressed against me and was just so sweet, and I really fell in love with her immediately.

O'BRIEN: No tags, no phone number on the crate, and police said if the owner did not materialize soon, the dog would be put to sleep.

GARRETT: Especially having rescued her, I just thought, you know, I can't let that happen.

O'BRIEN: A week passed. No one came forward. Dana and the dog left town together. To Dana's home in New York. She named her Sunny. She made fast friends, canine and human alike. It was a happy ending, or so it seemed.

MISTY MCCOURTNEY, OWNER OF RESCUED DOG: Hey, is my mom there.

O'BRIEN: Enter Misty McCourtney, the dog's rightful owner. The 17-year-old adopted the puppy when she was four weeks old, named her "Nevaeh." That's "Heaven" spelled backwards.

MCCOURTNEY: We ending up taking her home the first night we got here. She couldn't eat on her own, so he bottle-fed her.

O'BRIEN: Misty had been frantically trying to track the dog down. She finally got the story from police.

And six weeks after we rescued the dog, Dana got the call she feared.

GARRETT: I knew at that point I was so attached that I wasn't going to be able to just put her in a crate, and put her on a plane and ship her back home.

O'BRIEN: So Dana drove her back, 1,300 miles to Misty's new home, with her dad in Nebraska.

GARRETT: There she is.

MCCOURTNEY: Neveah, Hi there, baby. Oh my God. Oh, you're getting me all dirty, but I don't care.

GARRETT: She saw Misty, and she was happy. But then it kicked in, and you can see when she really realize who it was, and she got so excited and just started whimpering and scampering around, and it made me feel so good that she recognized her and was really happy to see her.

MCCOURTNEY: I just feel really, really excited that she's here. I want to thank you so much for bringing her back. I'm really happy you brought her back.

O'BRIEN: A bittersweet end to the tale of the pup-struck producer, the grateful owner, and a well-loved pooch.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That's a sad one, isn't it? Brings tears to your eyes.

COSTELLO: It hits me every time. With so much happening in the world, I cry over that story every time I see it.

O'BRIEN: Dana is very attached to that pooch, and she's now looking to adopt another animal.

So anyway, we'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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