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Fourteen-Year-Old & His Father Appear In Court For First Time; Police Pressured Man To Confess To Murder That Never Happened; China Halts Foreign Adoptions Of Its Children; Transportation Dept. Investigating Frequent-Flyer Programs. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired September 06, 2024 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:30:25]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We're learning that the 14-year-old suspect in a Georgia school shooting will face additional charges as he and his father made back-to-back court appearances today.
The alleged gunman sat quietly in court as the judge told him that he faces life in prison if he's convicted of killing two teachers and two students at Apalachee High School.
The boy's father, Colin Gray, faced the same judge moments later. He's charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for providing the gun that his son allegedly used in the rampage.
This is just the second case in U.S. history where prosecutors will try to hold a parent partly responsible for a mass shooting that was committed by their child.
CNN's Rafael Romo is live northeast of Atlanta in Winder, Georgia.
And, Rafael, we're also hearing more from some of the family members of the victims. What can you tell us about that?
RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Brianna, specifically from the mother of Christian Angulo, one of the two fellow students that were shot by the teenage suspect.
And it is just very difficult to hear what she had to say, the manner in which her son was killed.
But let me tell you first that the first appearance for both father and son has come and gone. And now it will likely be three months before we see them both again in court.
Fourteen-year-old Colt Gray and his 54-year-old father, Colin Gray, are scheduled to have their preliminary hearing here at the Barrow County courthouse on December 4th, at the same time as today's hearing, 8:30 in the morning.
Colt Gray was arraigned on four counts of felony murder and is expected to be tried as an adult following the Wednesday shooting that left four people dead here in Winder, Georgia.
After the hearing, Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said Gray will face additional charges.
His father, Colin Gray was arraigned on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children.
His arrest warrant, obtained by CNN, alleges the following, and here I quote, Brianna. "Colin Gray did cause the death of" -- a redacted name -- "a child under the age of 18 years, irrespective of malice, by providing a firearm to Colt Gray with knowledge that he was a threat."
And here's the key, Brianna, "to himself and others."
Meanwhile, we're now hearing from the mother of Christian Angulo, one of the two students killed Wednesday. As you can imagine, Emma Angulo is trying to understand the violent and unexpected way in which her 14-year-old son died.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EMMA ANGULO, MOTHER OF SHOOTING VICTIM CHRISTIAN ANGULO (through translation): I'm in mourning. He didn't deserve to die like this.
I miss him. For me, this is like I wish it was a dream.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMO: And, Brianna, according to two law enforcement sources, Colin Gray told investigators he purchased the A.R.-style gun used in the shooting of two teachers and two students as a holiday present, a Christmas present for his son last December.
In a new and shocking development, we have learned that the Barrow County Sheriff's Office has issued an arrest warrant for Marcee Gray. She's the mother of the high school shooter and former wife of his father.
And this sought for offenses committed last November, including felony possession of controlled substances and using a false license plate -- Brianna?
KEILAR: All right, Rafael Romo, we'll track that as well. Thank you for the very latest.
[14:33:54]
When we do come back, the shocking story of a man pressured to confess to a murder that never happened. Police even brought his dog into the interrogation room. We'll tell you why. We'll tell you how this all happened, next.
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[14:38:40] BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: This is kind of a nightmare scenario. Get this, a man reports the disappearance of his father to law enforcement, but then after a marathon interrogation, police get him into confessing that he murdered his dad. The twist? There was no murder at all. His father was still alive.
CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has an exclusive story you will see nowhere else.
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SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In August 2018, Tom Perez called Fontana, California, police to report his elderly father missing.
911 OPERATOR: Hello, this CSO Pina the Fontana Police.
We're going to put him in the system right now as a missing person.
PROKUPECZ: But 36 hours later, Perez was placed on a psychiatric hold for trying to take his own life. And the Fontana Police Department had gotten him to admit to a murder he never committed.
TOM PEREZ, PRESSURED TO CONFESS TO HIS FATHER MURDER AFTER 17-HOUR INTERROGATION: I was now in their little box of horrors, their little box, as they call it.
PROKUPECZ: Perez has never publicly spoken about what happened, until now, to CNN.
PEREZ: I felt like they were my captors and I had nothing. There was nothing I could do.
PROKUPECZ: Detectives at the Fontana Police Department brought Perez in for questioning over his missing father. He soon became their prime suspect.
[14:40:06]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really concerning to me that he hasn't been back yet.
PROKUPECZ: They were convinced Perez's father had been murdered at the home the two shared. Police said Perez appeared suspicious. And they suspected a violent act based on broken furniture, and that some of his father's things were discarded.
They also said they found some blood evidence inside the home. Perez told police the mess was from home renovations and they were getting rid of things before selling it.
After searching the home, police asked him to go to the station. That's when detectives turned a missing persons call into a 17-hour interrogation to get a confession.
When they were not successful, they recruited Perez's close friend to help.
UNIDENTIFIED FRIEND: (INAUDIBLE)
PEREZ: Impossible.
PROKUPECZ: When the friend, who later said he regretted his involvement, didn't, get a confession, the interrogators brought his pet dog, Margo, into the room.
UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: And killed him. He's dead. And your, dog sitting here looking at you knowing that you killed your dad.
PROKUPECZ: Detectives suggested that Margo might need to be put down after witnessing such a traumatic event.
PEREZ: Just wanted to hope, not let go.
And then they took her out of the room sometime after that. Felt like the end of the world for me.
We're up here.
JEFF NOBLE, POLICE EXPERT HIRED BY PEREZ: I've never, ever seen a situation where the police bring a dog this size through the police department. They transport it there, walk it through the police department, bring it into interrogation room and use it as a tool in order to seek a confession.
It's unconscionable. It's simply unconscionable.
PROKUPECZ: Throughout the interrogation, Perez says he was suffering from mental health issues but was denied medical help.
EVANS: Either bring me my doctor or bring me to the E.R.
UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: You don't need to go to the E.R.
PROKUPECZ: In the footage CNN reviewed, police lead a sleep deprived and exasperated Perez into a confession.
UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: Did you stab him?
EVANS: I think that I did.
UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: What did you do? Where would you have stabbed him?
EVANS: Maybe in the belly.
JERRY STEERING, PEREZ'S LAWYER: They got him to affirm suggestions they made to him like, well, you stabbed him. OK, I stabbed him.
PROKUPECZ: Distraught, psychologically being overwhelmed with grief, Perez says he tried to take his own life using his shoelace.
EEVANS: They attacked me right at the very thing that I loved most, my fur baby and my father. And it didn't seem like there's anything left. I couldn't see the reason to continue with more pain.
PROKUPECZ: But his father wasn't dead.
EVANS: Margo, I believe, was following me.
PROKUPECZ: Police learned from Perez's sister that their father was unharmed but Perez remained in the interrogation room.
STEERING: They learned that Tom's father was alive and well and was at LAX Airport ready to take a flight to go visit his sister.
They didn't have the nerve to look him in the face. They didn't have the nerve to tell him his dad was OK.
EVANS: They left me in that mental anguish and just suffer continually.
PROKUPECZ: Police put them on a psychiatric hold at a hospital where, days later, he finally learned his father is alive.
EVANS: A young -- a younger nurse came over to my bedside and says, I know it's -- it does say in your file that not to speak to anybody, any family members, but your dad's on the phone.
And I'm like, what! She handed the phone to me and I just dropped to the floor crying because he's --
PROKUPECZ: Five days of hell after he called the police for help, he is reunited with his father.
THOMAS PEREZ SR, FATHER OF TOM PEREZ: And he said, dad, is that you, is that really you? I said yes. We had tears in our eyes.
PROKUPECZ: Seeking accountability for what he endured, Perez filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Fontana.
NOBLE: Police officers are trained that they can engage in deception. But when you go over the line and you engage in deceptive action that would cause an innocent person to confess to a crime they didn't commit, that -- that's where the line is crossed.
PROKUPECZ: One of the detectives defended his actions in a deposition video exclusively obtained by CNN.
SGT. KYLE GUTHRIE, DETECTIVE ON PEREZ CASE: I don't think that the police warn would say we did anything wrong. We were just attempting to get some information from Mr. Perez.
And then we had been with Mr. Perez all day and we're running out of things to say to him to try to get the answer about where his father was located.
[14:44:59]
PROKUPECZ: There is no indications that there has been an internal review. And none of the officers involved have been disciplined. Several have been promoted.
Earlier this year, Perez settled with the city for $900,000. The city issued a statement to CNN saying, "The settlement included no finding of wrongdoing."
The city added that "Perez was not isolated as claimed. He was given his medication and fed multiple times."
For Perez and his father, the trauma continues.
PEREZ: No amount of compensation will ever compensate me for what I went through, ever.
Shimon Prokupecz, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Our thanks to Shimon Prokupecz for that exclusive reporting.
Up next, people rely on a frequent-flyer points to help pay for big trips. But now the government wants to know if those programs are actually living up to their promises. What sparked this investigation? We'll break it down in just moments.
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[14:50:23]
KEILAR: New today, hundreds of families in the process of adopting children from China are now in limbo after Beijing officially placed its foreign adoptions program on ice.
CNN's Steven Jiang is here with what's behind the move.
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STEVEN JIANG, CNN BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF: Brianna, this announcement didn't come as a total shock because the number of international adoptions from China have been in decline in recent years, and the program came to a sudden halt during the pandemic and never really recovered even after Covid.
But still, this change, it marks the end of a policy that has seen more than 160,000 Chinese children being adopted all over the world since the early 1990s, about half of them going to the United States.
Remember, when the program began, the Chinese government was dealing with an overpopulation problem. And the officials there very much enforcing its draconian one-child policy that basically limited most couples in cities to only one child, forcing many families to abandon children, especially girls and disabled kids.
But right now, the authorities are dealing with the opposite problem, a shrinking labor force and a rapidly aging society. That's why, within the last decade, they have twice relaxed its once very strict family planning policy, allowing couples now to have up to three children.
But none of that seemed to have worked against this backdrop of a slowing economy and young people's changing attitudes towards marriage and parenthood.
Now, Chinese reactions to this policy change seem to be mixed on social media.
But those who applauded this decision -- decision seemed to be expressing a lot of nationalistic sentiment, saying China's now rich and powerful enough to take care of its own abandoned children.
And often also mentioning rising tensions between China and the U.S.
But none of this economic, social and political realities, of course, offered a much real comfort to the hundreds of international families in the middle of adopting children from China.
Because the government here seems have indicated this ban goes into effect immediately, with very limited exceptions, leaving hundreds of American in limbo and potentially heartbroken -- Brianna?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: All right, Steven Jiang, thank you for that.
The Department of Transportation is investigating the Frequent-Flyer Programs at four major U.S. airlines and ordering that the airlines handover some details on this.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sent a letter to Delta, American, United and Southwest asking about their policies, including changing prices, changing the value of points and charging fees, fees to redeem those points.
Here to discuss is CNN's Richard Quest.
And, Richard, obviously, you are known for your travels around the world. Is there a sense among travelers and fliers like you that these programs don't live up to their promises?
RICHARD QUEST, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: What is the promise? I'm not being difficult when I say that. If the promise is that you can travel for free, then, no, they don't live up to the promise.
But what they've done is they say, the promises you can travel for free, but we will keep changing the prices and require you to put more miles on the table and we will make it more difficult.
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QUEST: But you can travel for free.
I'll give a good example. The U.S. carriers now have a rule that every seat is available for frequent flyers. So there's no capacity restrictions. Yey! And then they say, oh, but if you want that last seat, it's going to cost you five times as many miles. In other words, dynamic pricing.
I'm not going to mention the airline, but I have an airline's frequent flyer in front of me. New York to London, New York to London, economy. I know that's very difficult for you, Boris --
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KEILAR: Economy.
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QUEST: -- 30,000 -- you can go for 30,000 miles at one time. You can go for 40,000 miles at another time. You can go for 47,000 miles at another time or 52,000.
My point is dynamic pricing. We don't know how it's priced. We don't know how the rules are made.
And then, all of a sudden, you will get a massive devaluation where they will just raise the tide of the number of miles needed. And that's what the DOJ is saying is unfair.
KEILAR: Yes, that does seem unfair. I'm indignant now --
(LAUGHTER)
KEILAR: -- listening to you talk about this.
OK, so the airlines, they say people, you know, they're free to choose between the programs. But that's also kind of difficult because, you know, once you're in, you're kind of in.
But also how do you really compare them apples to apples, Richard?
QUEST: You can't. You can't. Simple. Look, I live and breathe and eat and sleep this stuff.
[14:55:02]
So I will want to fly, let's say, New York to Tokyo. I will look at all my frequent flyer plans. I will work out, if I move my miles from my Chase Rewards, how many will I get?
United mileage plus one for one, or should I then put them into Qantas, which might have a better -- which is why there are several great Web sites which will do this for you.
But the mileage, the mileage, and if you will, famine, and the mileage feast, bearing in mind the airlines makes a fortune on their miles.
In fact, many of them have said we're actually selling miles business that happens to have a few planes as well. And we saw that during the pandemic when they had to mortgage their frequent-flyer plans and we saw just how big they were. KEILAR: Man.
Richard Quest --
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QUEST: Where do you want to go?
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KEILAR: I'm going to fly out to the Green Room.
(LAUGHTER)
KEILAR: It is for free. And that's where I'm going after this.
Richard Quest, thank you very much.
QUEST: Thanks so much.
KEILAR: So we're following some breaking news out of New York. Because Judge Juan Merchan is moving sentencing for former President Trump in his hush money case to after the election. We'll be talking about the consequences of that decision, next.
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