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U.S. Airstrike Targets key Terrorist in Libya; Dallas Police Attacker's Mom Speaks; Prison Break Manhunt; Two Shark Attacks on Same Beach. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 15, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:15] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. launches air strikes targeting this key terrorist in Libya, but there are now conflicting reports about whether he lived or died.

Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon, she's following this story for us. Good morning -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning -- Carol. Just really too soon to say.

This was the guy the U.S. was going after, a man named Mokhtar Belmokhtar -- the head of the al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa. They did launch air strikes at a site in Libya where they had intelligence that he was there. But just too soon to get that confirming information from the ground about whether he was actually killed in the air strike.

Belmokhtar is somebody the U.S. has wanted very badly as the head of that al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa. He is said to have been behind the 2013 attack on a gas plant in next door Algeria. Several hostages taken and killed in that attack. And then the U.S. in federal court charged him with a number of offenses, including hostage taking, kidnapping, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

It just goes to the seriousness of how badly they wanted him. They've been watching him for a long time. We don't know what intelligence they got but they got some sort of intelligence that he was on the move and he was going to cross the border into Libya and be in this area.

They launched the air strikes, still waiting for that confirmation from the ground -- Carol.

All right, Barbara Starr reporting live for us from the Pentagon. Thanks so much.

STARR: Sure.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the newsroom, the mother of the suspect in the Dallas police attacks speaks out. Why she says her son, James Boulware, never got the help he needed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANNINE HAMMOND, SHOOTER'S MOTHER: If you've got a really sick loved one out there, you better get them help because it's probably not going to get better, it's going to get worse, and God forbid it should end up like yesterday for my son.

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[10:36:22] COSTELLO: The parents of the gunman who attacked Dallas cops are opening up about their son's violent and troubled past. James Boulware's father tells CNN his son was boiling with anger before the shooting rampage because of a custody battle. He blamed police officers for taking away his son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM BOULWARE, SHOOTER'S FATHER: I knew he was angry at police. He blamed them for taking his son. I tried to tell him the police didn't do it, the police were doing their job, to enforce the laws.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Boulware's mother paints a more disturbing picture of her son telling CNN she thought James would go after her, not the police, because she was the one who was awarded custody of his son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Hammond: I got to talk to the detective who was in charge of the thing, and he said he would call me back. He did not know whether James was alive or not. They were sending a robot to see and all that. And in the meantime we, of course, looked it up on the Internet, looked at videos.

And then police came by to check to see if there were pipe bombs or bombs here, and there were none. Evidently he did not single us out. I would have thought that I would have been the one he singled out since I got custody of his child.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Nick Valencia is following the story live in Dallas. Good morning, Nick.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning -- Carol. This is the exact spot where 35-year-old James Boulware carried out his attack just after midnight on Saturday at Dallas police headquarters. It is a miracle that no one was injured other than the suspect. We were given a tour of this crime scene on Saturday, shown the police car that was shot up. Two officers were inside at the time of the shooting. They were uninjured.

We have also been digging into Boulware's history. It is a troubled history, one haunted by mental illness. We spoke to his mother, and she told us the struggle that her son was going through.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAMMOND: He had been going downhill for a while mentally, and he couldn't hold a job, so he was stressed out. And in 2013 my brother came to live here I guess at the end of 2012, and he -- James began to get more and more irate. If anybody disagreed with him on anything, he just couldn't stand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: A chilling account of an individual who was clearly disturbed and intent on taking lives here. 14 police officers from the Dallas police department have been put on administrative leave because they were engaged in that shootout. That's standard operating procedure, but here many still counting their blessings. They're lucky to be alive -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Nick Valencia reporting live from Dallas this morning.

So the signs were there. James Boulware was a violent man. The question now, should someone have known he would target police? With me now Judge Alex Ferrer, he's the former Florida 11th Judicial Circuit Judge and host of "Judge Alex". Welcome -- Judge Alex.

JUDGE ALEX FERRER, FORMER FLORIDA JUDGE: Thank you, Carol. It's great to be with you.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here.

Judge Kim Cooks stripped Boulware of his custody rights to his son. He threatened that judge. Boulware then called 911 and threatened police for taking his child which doesn't make any sense. Could he have been locked up for those threats?

[10:39:57] FERRER: Well, I mean if you threaten a judge, yes, it's a federal offense. I'm not really sure what his threat was. Typically you won't get away with that in a courtroom. Typically if you were to mouth off to a judge or threaten a judge, you'd be held in contempt on the spot.

But as far as volatile individuals, like I heard the judge say that you looked into his eyes in the courtroom and you saw the hatred. Judges, especially in family court, we see violent individuals, aggressive, people who are furious. Remember, in every family court case there's generally a winner and a loser. Sometimes there's two losers and they are less than happy.

So to see people who are furious with the system, furious with the judge that's an everyday occurrence over and over again throughout the country. So it's not unusual for -- I have done it myself -- it's not unusual for a judge to get off the bench and say to their staff or to another judge or think in their head, you know, one day that guy is going to snap.

You know that, but there's no crime that has occurred. There's nothing you can do. I used to be a police officer and I would see people who were violent on the street and you knew they were going to snap. There was nothing you could do to protect anybody because they hadn't committed an offense. You can't just take them into custody and say, you know -- it's not like the movie "Minority Report" where you go like, ok, in the future you're going to commit a crime so we're going to take you into custody now.

COSTELLO: That's right.

FERRER: Unfortunately, that's just the way it is.

COSTELLO: Interestingly, Judge Cooks was afraid of this guy. She was so afraid that she told CNN that she asked for extra security every time he came to her courtroom. Here is what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE KIM COOKS, DALLAS FAMILY DISTRICT COURT: When he had a court appearance or when we thought that he would be in court the security was always heightened in the building, in my courtroom I had extra security put in place because he was always a threat to us. So we just didn't know what he would do or when he would do it or, you know, what was going to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Also take this into account, his mother was so afraid of her son she slept with a gun. She said her son talked to empty chairs, he talked about shooting rampages at schools. She said she could not get him the help he need.

Is she right? Was it just impossible to find this man help?

FERRER: That's a very difficult question. I mean, obviously I think the largest fault that we have is the way we treat people with mental illness. You know, most of the problems that we see whether it's a shooting at a school or something like this, it involves people who are mentally ill and our mental health system really does fail them. We don't have enough support for that.

We have plenty of support for locking people up after they commit a crime, but, you know, the preventive work just isn't there. And she's probably right about that. There's just not much you can do, especially when you have an individual who doesn't want help. There's only so much you can do to take somebody into custody involuntarily. They have to be an immediate danger to themselves or an immediate danger to somebody else.

Somebody could threaten you and say I'm going to kill you, and in most places that's not a crime until they take some step, whether it's pulling their arm back to hit you or whether it's something in furtherance of that threat that actually makes it a crime. So when you have an individual who is uncooperative about getting the mental help they need, everybody around them can know this person is about to blow, and there's just nothing the judicial system can do about it.

I mean look at the flip side. If you give the power to police and judges to lock up people who they think are going to commit a crime, I think we would end up with a much worse situation than these isolated incidents.

COSTELLO: Judge Alex, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, two kids lose arms in separate shark attacks on the same stretch of beach on the same day. We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: Ten days, nearly 1,000 leads and still no sign of two cold- blooded killers on the loose. We're also learning stunning new details about the brazen prison escape by inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat. According to authorities, the inmates may have been sneaking out of their cells in the middle of the night to rehearse their break away. We've also learned that the inmates planned to drive to a destination seven hours away.

Earlier this morning Joyce Mitchell, the prison employee accused of giving escape tools to the men, appeared in court. She's charged with promoting prison contraband and criminal facilitation. She faces up to eight years behind bars if she is convicted.

Joining me now, Clinton County district attorney Andrew Wylie. Welcome, sir, and thank you so much for being with me.

ANDREW WYLIE, CLINTON COUNTY DISTRACT ATTORNEY: Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: You were inside that courtroom. Can you tell us the mood?

WYLIE: Well, there was obviously somewhat of an adjournment. There was an application by Keith Bruno, the attorney, who advised the court that it appeared that he had a conflict of interest. Based upon that application, the court reviewed it, made a determination that there was a conflict or a potential conflict that could occur later on in the proceedings. So he contacted Steven Johnson, another local attorney here in Plattsburgh, who has extensive criminal defense background, and Mr. Johnson agreed to represent Mrs. Mitchell.

COSTELLO: We were wondering since miss Mitchell has now been charged, do you think she'll continue to cooperate with authorities?

WYLIE: Well, we're certainly open to that. It's obviously subject to her attorney's approval and her consent to do that. We've left the door open for her continued cooperation.

[10:50:09] COSTELLO: How deeply do you think she was involved in this?

WYLIE: She has told us that she's provided hacksaw blades, provided other contraband to both Matt and Sweat, and she was aware of the time frame of the escape. She had been provided information on the period of time that they had been working on cutting the backs of the cell walls out, going down into the tunnel system of the facility and working their escape plan. So I think she was relatively involved.

COSTELLO: Relatively involved. We're just wondering how many other people you think was involved in this.

WYLIE: Yes. As far as other people that are involved, the investigators are continuing to follow up every lead that we have coming in in relation to that. We have -- right now we have no future arrests scheduled or pending in the matter while we're conducting the investigation.

COSTELLO: I mean is there a number that you could put on the number of people you suspect had something to do with this?

WYLIE: I can't comment on that. Sorry.

COSTELLO: The "Albany Times Union" is reporting there was a plot by the inmates and Mitchell to possibly kill Mitchell's husband. Can you confirm that?

WYLIE: I received that report. Many of the reporting agencies have asked me about that, and I have no comment relative to that at this time.

COSTELLO: Did you ask miss Mitchell about that?

WYLIE: I have not spoken with Miss Mitchell.

COSTELLO: I understand her husband is also a prison worker. Have you cleared him of suspicion or wrongdoing?

WYLIE: We have not cleared anyone at this point in time. Mr. Mitchell is still being investigated. We are open to speaking with him if he chooses to do that. We are continuing any leads that relate to Mr. Mitchell and his potential involvement in this matter -- or at least his knowledge of any involvement in this matter.

COSTELLO: Is it as simple as that, that he had knowledge of it and not actually physically helped these guys?

WYLIE: Joyce Mitchell has informed us that she has spoken to him prior to her arrest of her involvement. That's information that I have, but I don't have the details of what that information was.

COSTELLO: And just some of the details about how these guys were able to get the kind of equipment they needed to break out of this prison. We understand that there was construction going on inside the prison, and at times these prisoners borrowed tools from the contractors and replaced them when they had to. Is that your understanding?

WYLIE: No, that's not my understanding. What my understanding is, is that you're accurate in that there was construction going on throughout the facility. There was construction going on in the blocks which the inmates had access to, and when I say "inmates" I'm talking about Sweat and Matt. That they had access once they got out of their cells, once they were able to get into the tunnel system, they located a toolbox. And within that toolbox there could have been some power tools in that toolbox that they utilized to assist them in furthering their escape route. COSTELLO: There are also reports out there that Governor Cuomo, you

know, he had to cut costs and he eliminated some overtime and perhaps there wasn't sufficient employees in place inside that prison to prevent something like this. Can you comment on that?

WYLIE: Well, I'm aware that the IG's office in working with the Governor is going to conduct a very thorough investigation relative to that. We want to make every effort that we can to avoid anything of this nature ever occurring again not only at Clinton Correctional Facility but throughout each department -- each of the facilities within the department of Corrections of New York.

COSTELLO: I mean, I have read that some of the watch towers weren't manned at night because of the cutting costs of the prison.

WYLIE: That's an issue that you'll have to speak with the Governor about or the superintendent of Department of Corrections.

COSTELLO: And just another question about Joyce Mitchell and what she told you. Supposedly she said that she was supposed to drive these two guys to a location seven hours away. Do you know where they wanted to go specifically?

[10:55:10] WYLIE: We do not. We've made several inquiries of Joyce Mitchell relative to establishing a location in attempts that if they are not in the area any longer, that we would be able to localize that location seven hours away, and she's consistent in each and every interview that she's discussed the seven-hour trip but not given any type of a formal destination, whether it's outside of New York, whether it's outside of the United States.

COSTELLO: And just a last question about Joyce Mitchell. I know she said that one of the inmates made her feel special, but what caused her when all was said and done to back out of this plan?

WYLIE: Only from reviewing her statements, she indicated that, you know, she loved her husband, that she didn't want to throw her life away. And those were some of the reasons why she possibly backed out and caused her to have that panic attack on Friday afternoon.

COSTELLO: How would you characterize her?

WYLIE: I'm not going to comment on my characterization of her at this time.

COSTELLO: All right. Andrew Wylie, thank you so much for being with me this morning. I appreciate it.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Checking some of the top stories for you at 59 minutes past.

A $2 billion deal could impact who is filling your prescriptions. CVS is taking over Target's pharmacies rebranding them as CVS. The sale affects over 1,600 pharmacies in 47 states. In addition, Target's 80 clinics will be rebranded as "minute clinics".

And frightening scene at the North Carolina beach, two young swimmers each lost an arm in separate shark attacks that happened less than 90 minutes apart. A 13-year-old girl was attacked on Sunday afternoon. While she was still getting treatment from first responders, a 16- year-old boy was attacked nearby. Both had surgery and have been upgraded to fair condition. Officials say they're not sure if the same shark attacked both teenagers but it appears likely.

[10:59:57] And a wedding party at one of the world's most famous hotels interrupted by gunfire. Police say a gun accidentally went off at the event inside New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Four people taken to the hospital with injuries. They were later released.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. "AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now.