Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

FBI: No Evidence Gunfire Hit Derailed Train; Walmart Reporting Weaker-Than-Expected Profits. Aired 9:30-10:00a ET.

Aired May 19, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:30] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I am Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Thousands of commuters riding trains to work this morning may not know what caused last week's deadly Amtrak crash until next year. That's right, the NTSB warning the investigation into that derailment could take up to 12 months.

But officials are making progress and the FBI said they found no evidence that gunfire hit the train who caused that mysterious damage to the doomed train's windshield. CNN's Erin McLaughlin, live from Philadelphia. Good morning.

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol, at the center of this investigation is 32-year-old Brandon Bostian, and he said he doesn't remember what happened. But investigators look into a range of possibilities, from human error to something more intentional. We'll take you through some of the NTSB's latest findings. They have found the following, the FBI examined the circular marking on the windshield yesterday and concluded that it was not the result of a bullet.

They say that Bostian did not tell dispatchers that the train was hit by a projectile, and they say that so far there is no indication of mechanical failure, and they say they are not ruling that out. Now the NTSB said probable cause will be determined at the end of this investigation and the investigation could last up to 12 months and officials said that is not unusual for this kind of investigation, Carol.

COSTELLO: In the meantime, more lawsuits being filed against Amtrak. What can you tell us about them, Erin?

MCLAUGHLIN: Yes. That's right, Carol. This morning we are learning of the lawsuit filed by an Amtrak conductor alleging carelessness and negligence. Yesterday there was a law suit filed - a mass lawsuit filed on behalf of four of the Amtrak passengers. One of those passenger, is 43 year old Daniel Armyn, his lawyer had a press conference and described his injuries. Take a listen.

ROBERT MONGELUZZI, ATTORNEY FOR PASSENGER SUING AMTRAK: He fractured his ribs and bruised his lungs and knocked out his teeth and tore his ACL and MCL, and he staggered out of the train to try to help others and literally when he tried to put weight on his leg, he collapsed to the ground.

MCLAUGHLIN: Now, the issue with these lawsuits is a $200 million federal cap that applies to all claims as well as all victims of any single rail accident, and investigators say that, that simply is not enough to cover the damages in this kind of crash, and now lawmakers are looking at possibly trying to increase that cap, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Erin McLaughlin reporting live from Philadelphia. Thank you so much. Now Doug Riddell, joins me now, he is a former Amtrak Engineer. Welcome Doug, good morning.

DOUG RIDDELL, FORMER AMTRAK ENGINEER: Carol, I just want to first make sure everybody understands, I am not a Amtrak spokesman and I am a retired railroad. It's the opinions that I'm expressing in mind and have nothing to do with Amtrak, please. Thank you.

COSTELLO: Oh, no. Thank you very much. We value transparency on this program, so I appreciate you saying that, Doug. So let's start here, the FBI says the train that derailed was not shot out. But the NTSB also says that they've quote, not ruled out the possibility that another object may have struck the windshield. You have been in a train crash. Do you think something hit the train?

[09:35:00] RIDDELL: There was an event that happened. There is two miles between north Philly and where the place where the derailment took place. As an Amtrak passenger, locomotive engineer, your duty is to accelerate the train as quickly as possible, remain at the maximum speed as long as possible before putting on the brake.

Coming out of that 60 mile an hour speed restriction in north Philly, yes, you throttle up and you get it up to 80 miles an hour, and that is normal. The anomaly is that after about 20 to 25 seconds when you reach 80 miles an hour, the engineer at that point was to have disengaged or reduced his throttle and put on the brakes so that he can cruised at 80 miles an hour for probably 30 to 40 seconds and then put on the brake and reduced the throttle.

That's where something happened, distraction whatever, a brick or another projectile, something happened to take this young man's attention and focus away from doing what comes normally. You are looking in the truck into distance in the dark with sodium vapor lights illuminating a little bit of the right-of-way and all you can see ahead of you is what the headlight illuminates, and you are looking for the signal, you're looking for overhead bridge that you know at that point, you are supposed to be putting your brake on.

You're concentrating and suddenly, you're distracted, and if you are reading a good book, you're sitting there and all of a sudden somebody comes up behind you taps you on the shoulders, something it startles you and you lose your attention, and it takes only a few seconds at the speeds that they run on the northeast corridor for you to be distracted to lose presence of where you are at and suddenly you realize that you have reached that point of no return.

At that point, you realize you have to take, you know, you have to take evasive action of emergency brakes. COSTELLO: Let me ask you this, Doug. Let's look again at the

shattered windshield of this train and this mark the NTSB investigators are looking so closely at. Does that appear to you - was the train hit by some sort of projectile? Was it the engineer's head going into the windshield? What do you think this is?

RIDDELL: No. I am not looking at the monitor, and if you are on the engineer's side which is if you're facing the engineer is to your left, the engineer's compartment. I noticed that about an hour after the wreck, I was watching the coverage, and I told my wife, I said that young man is dead, paralyzed or unconscious, because he obviously went into the windshield and sustained an injury.

I'm pretty sure, if you notice the crystallization of the windshield, there is impact its either from the inside or from the outside, and as to what has happened, I have hit eagles, I've hit all kinds of animals. I've bricks thrown at me, and whenever that happens, the windshield, because of the thickness of it and the glazing, it does not shatter hopefully, but it does crystallize. So it does show damage of something hitting the windshield, and what that was and when it happened, I am not sure.

But if it happened in the critical 20 to 30 seconds before he was supposed to put the brake on, that could be the missing piece of the puzzle that everybody wants to know, and we know speed was the cause of the derailment but we do not know the reason the brake was not applied and the throttle was not reduced, and that's the missing piece of the puzzle.

COSTELLO: All right, Doug Riddell. Thanks for your insight. I sure appreciate it.

RIDDELL: Thank you.

COSTELLO: You are welcome.

RIDDELL: Still to come in the "Newsroom," what Walmart's sales slump says about the U.S. economy, next.

[09:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: If Walmart is not making much money, what does that say about the entire U.S. economy. The nation's largest retailer reporting weaker than expected profit. The company putting the blame on increasing employee pay and a slowdown in consumer expending. So why should we care? Let's talk about that with the managing principal of seventh capital investment Monica Menta - I'm sorry for messing up your title, I am, and I think it's quite impressive, I must say, and CNN's money's Alison Kosik. Good morning to both of you. Alison, I want to start with you. How much were sales down at Walmart?

ALISON KOSIK, BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: OK. Sales took a hit at Walmart and it was not a huge hit, but as goes Walmart so goes the economy. That's sort of the phrase people like to use because Walmart has its finger on the pulse of the American consumer and we like to really parse out its earnings report because we get an idea of what the consumer is thinking, and you know what it looks like consumers are out there but they are not really out there spending their money in a big way, and it's not just Walmart.

Other stores are seeing the same thing. We saw the same thing with Macy's and Kohl's, and the reasons for that, we are seeing on the screen GDP, that's growth in the economy, barely there in the first quarter of this year. April retails sales numbers were the worst since 2009, and then if you take from April of this year compare it to April of last year, you only see growth and retail sales of .9 percent. And that's anemic. So you're seeing an economy that's kind of just sort of moving along for - it's moving forward, it's just sort of not all cracked up to be and you're not seeing that confidence in the economy being reflected in the American consumer.

COSTELLO: But Monica, when we look at the jobs reports, especially the jobs report over the last several months, they have been really good and everybody is saying, "Yay, the economy is really improving." How do we marry these two things?

MONICA MENTA, MANAGING PRINCIPAL, SEVENTH CAPITAL INVESTMENT: Unfortunately the jobs report somewhat over states the health of the economy. One of the big things to point out, is that consumers have seen about 1 percent of the house hold budget come back to them because of lower oil prices. But at the same time, they've seen their healthcare spending go up by 1 percent.

So they are saving a little bit more but they are also spending in ways that it actually just doesn't show up in the retail numbers. So the American consumer is still struggling to get by, and there are you know, 10.8 million people that consider themselves underemployed, and wages are still just growing in an anemic pace. So the consumers are struggling with a lot of different things in their lives and that's why they are not running to the stores.

COSTELLO: And one of the things they are beginning to struggle with are gas prices, and we are elated they remain so low, but not so much in the past.

KOSIK: Well, they are still low. If you look up, if you compared...

COSTELLO: They went up?

[09:45:00] KOSIK: They have gone up, but not as much as you think. If you compare today to a year ago, gas prices are still almost a dollar lower. So what you're really seeing Carol is, you're seeing the gas prices still at a relatively low level in comparison where they could be or where they had been, and you are seeing Americans really not necessarily spending that money in stores. They are paying doubt debt and they were saving money because you are not seeing the confidence in the economy. It's kind of like they are saving for a rainy day.

COSTELLO: Well, actually, that's a good thing, right? I want to talk a little bit about Home Depot because Home Depot reported better than expected earnings, so why would that be? KOSIK: OK. So just like Walmart is reflective of the American

consumer, Home Depot is reflective of the housing market and we are seeing a pretty strong housing market. We got some numbers out today showing construction for new homes up 20 percent in April, and that's great. We are seeing existing home sales up 6 percent in March, and you're seeing people get out there and buy things for their homes, and that's why you are seeing Home Depot numbers do very, very well.

They are out there renovating and fixing up their homes and buying new homes, and that segment is doing really well. But the problem with the economy, you are not seeing the robust economy in all segments of the economy, and not seeing it in industrial production. You're not seeing it in consumer confidence, consumer spending and you want to see an economy operating in all cylinders. We're just not seeing that especially when you look at the consumer.

COSTELLO: All right. Alison Kosik and Monica Menta, thanks to both of you I appreciate it. So to cover the Newsroom we're headed live to the World War I gunship turned refugee ferry is off the coast of Tanzania, where humanitarian crisis is now unfolding.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:50:00] COSTELLO: Checking top stories for your 50 minutes past, another secret account. According to reports, Hillary Clinton had a second private e-mail address that she used during her tenure as secretary of state. The account was used to discuss strategies in Libya with longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

Two months ago Clinton's office said only one private account existed. The state department is reviewing those e-mails. Roughly 55,000 pages of them and says they should release them by January 2016.

Dramatic video out of China with high winds knocked down part of a wall on pedestrians walking in a western city. Two people were killed. Seven others injured. Police are now investigating, of course.

A humanitarian crisis now unfolding in the eastern African nation of Burundi as thousands flee their homes amidst the ongoing political crisis refugee camps in surrounding countries are getting overwhelmed. Joining me now live from a World War I gunship turned refugee ferry off the coast of Tanzania is CNN's Diana Magnay. Hi, Diana.

DIANA MARNAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Well, we spent the day on a very, very crowded village on the shores of Lake Tanganyika just across the border from Burundi. At one point in the last few weeks there were 50,000 people in this tiny little village community. Now there are 30,000. The UN and other aid agencies are trying to get them off on this World War I gunship as you said, the MV Liemba and one other ship.

And here you'll see some of those lucky enough today to get off. Basically when we arrived onshore, you could see the desperation as these people were trying as hard as they could to be the ones to get the wristband, this orange wristband, which is basically the life line to escape from these very, very crowded unsanitary conditions in that village of Kagunga downstairs they have hung drips from the ceilings of the decks to look after the very, very ill and there are extremely ill people here.

People who have malaria and also several cases of cholera confirmed. Several cholera deaths also as a result of the very crowded unsanitary conditions that these refugees have been kept in Kagunga and then they bring further into Tanzania to the latest refugee centers that they are being brought to. The figures are huge. Even though back in Burundi it is more of a politically uncertain situation, these people have all been traumatized by the very recent civil war and that's why they have decided not to wait but to leave preemptively in case the situation in Burindi degenerates into civil war again. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right. Diana Magnay, many thanks.

Still to come in the "Newsroom," another major crash raises safety concerns in Indy. Andy Scholes has more for you.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right Carol. After several crashes Indycar officials said enough is enough, they are making changes ahead of Sunday's big race. We'll tell you what they're doing to make the race safe when "Newsroom" continues.

[09:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: An Indycar driver is recovering this morning just days before the big race. James Hinchcliffe was behind the wheel yesterday when his Honda lost control and slammed into this wall, overturning and then the car caught fire. He's now in stable condition but a piece of the car had to be surgically removed from his leg. The accident is the latest in a series of spectacular crashes on that same track just this past week. Those drivers walking away from the wreckage thank goodness. Andy Scholes is in Atlanta to tell us more. Good morning.

SCHOLES: Yes. Good morning, Carol. Well, you know, the question about these cars now is are they safe to race? Apparently, they've been rather dangerous over the last week. Luckily in four crashes that we've seen, none of the drivers' injuries have been life threatening but Indycar officials are saying finally, enough is enough and they are making a change just days before their biggest race of the year.

The issue appears to be the new aero kits that the Chevrolet cars are now using. They're designed to help cars go faster but when they crash and turn around, it appears the new design of these cars is causing them to go airborne. The biggest example of this was just last week when three time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves saw his car did a complete flip after hitting the wall.

Indycar officials obviously don't want to see anything like this happen on Sunday. So they've made some rule changes. They're reducing engine power and making slight changes to the aero kits to add down force. Indycar officials have said all along Carol they want cars to go faster, but they want to do it safely.

COSTELLO: All right. Andy Scholes reporting live for us this morning. Thank you so much. The next hour of "CNN Newsroom" starts now.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We want to begin this hour with this image. Police in Waco, Texas, are just about to hold a news conference comes amid a chilling warning to law enforcement outlaw motorcycle gangs are gathering weapons and possibly planning to retaliate for Sunday's deadly shootout. We'll come back and join this news conference as soon as it begins.

But I would like to start with the fight against ISIS. Right now Shia militias are bracing for a major counteroffensive against the terror groups in one of Iraq's key cities Ramadi. Iraq's military already unleashing a punishing round of air strikes in the city of Fallujah. Taking at weapons and killing at least four militants that according to Iraq's ministry of defense were also getting new video of a dramatic rescue operation in Ramadi after a group of Iraqi soldiers had to be evacuated after getting trapped by ISIS. Let's bring in CNN's senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns, he's in Washington with more. Good morning.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The Iraqi government has rushed in reinforcements to try to stop the evens of ISIS setting up defensive lines east of Ramadi. There's a brigade from Iraqi federal police. The Iraqi government sent has also sent in another brigade from its quick reactions forces, coalition aircraft hitting targets inside the city.