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EF-4 Tornado Hits Washington, Illinois; Zimmerman Arrested After Disturbance Call; New Mexico Police Shoot At, Chase Van with Mom, Five Kids Inside After Traffic Stop; Man's Home Collapses Around Him; Drone's-Eye View of Typhoon's Destruction
Aired November 18, 2013 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back here live in Washington, Illinois. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We have been sharing our different I- Reports, these video, these pictures and I just want to share one video with you that has been viewed more than 230,000 times. We're going to play it for you and you'll understand why. I know my heart would be pounding just thinking, you know, watching this. What it would be like to see this out your window. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: How about that? This is certainly a faith-based community. Many people were in church yesterday. This is the mayor of Washington, Illinois. This is Gary Manier. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for coming out and talking to me. I can't imagine what your last 24 hours has been like, sleeping an hour and a half, so thank you. How are you doing?
MAYOR GARY MANIER, WASHINGTON, ILLINOIS: Well, Brooke, I'm doing fine. I tell you this community just doesn't ever surprise me. I don't care if it's fundraising for maybe someone that has cancer. A community center that we built for community, our community comes together for everything. Unfortunately, this is going to test us. I think we're ready for it. I think we'll rebuild and be stronger than ever.
BALDWIN: We were talking during the commercial. I asked you what is the one word you that you keep hearing over and over to describe the town, and it's resilience. You just finished the tour with the mayor, Pat Quinn, here in Illinois. Walking around and seeing this, what was his impression?
MANIER: You know, he's seen a lot. He's seen three of them since he's been governor. Harrisburg, he compared this, maybe a little worse. He couldn't believe when he drove through, actually, the devastation that he saw, much to our residential areas here.
BALDWIN: Three miles wide, right?
MANIER: Three miles long, about a quarter mile.
BALDWIN: More than 400 homes destroyed. Is that number still stands?
MANIER: Yes.
BALDWIN: You serve the city 13 years?
MANIER: Correct.
BALDWIN: How would you describe what this is?
MANIER: Well, I can tell you, you know, when it first happened, you're at a loss. You don't know where to go, where to run, who to contact. But outpouring from all over the community came together. As I was in Washington Estates, a subdivision behind us here, people were coming down the street, folks who lost their entire home, their whole life memories, looking for other people and friends and neighbors. So they're ready to help someone else. They had put all their devastation behind and were looking to help someone else.
BALDWIN: Where were you?
MANIER: I was in church.
BALDWIN: You were in church like so many people were.
MANIER: We went to the basement, listened to the warning signs, and I got to believe that the people who were not in church listened to the warning signs. We take those for granted. We have those drills all through school.
BALDWIN: Bou hear them growing up, but no one thinks a tornado is going to hit this town. I have heard it time and time again.
MANIER: Some of the older folks in town, including my parents, let's go outside and look for it. Not the thing to do. You don't want to be out in something like this. The governor's story about a 6-year-old convincing mother to go to the basement, you know, what a story. You know, just what he learned in school, you know.
BALDWIN: What is your biggest takeaway? What is the one thing you want to relay to people throughout the rest of the country when it comes to this town of 15,000?
MANIER: Sure, we're a faith-based community, and we're going to need help. It's a little devastating right now to know exactly what kind of help we're going to need. So the first two or three days, we call this day one, is what we have labeled it. But in the days to come and months and weeks ahead --
BALDWIN: Did you get the promise from the governor that you would get the help you need? MANIER: Yes, I did, and I spoke to the president of the United States on the trip back.
BALDWIN: What did he say?
MANIER: He said that his thoughts and prayers are with us and they would be anything they can to get government funding and government help. I also said, this isn't something I signed up for, Mr. President, and he said that's what leaders are made of. It was nice to hear from the president.
BALDWIN: Leader yourself, Mayor, thank you so much for stopping by. I appreciate it. Apologize for the freezing cold hands.
MANIER: Welcome to Illinois.
BALDWIN: Thank you very much. Don Lemon, up to you.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, and he needs to know that the whole world is praying for him as well, Brooke. Thank you. We're going to get back to Brooke in just moments here on CNN.
In the meantime, coming up, a terrifying scene caught on camera, police officers banging on the windows of this SUV and even firing shots at the vehicle as it drives away. That car, full of children. Did the officers do the right thing? That story is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. We're going to get back to the scene of those devastating tornadoes that went through much of the Midwest, but this is just into CNN. We're learning that George Zimmerman has been arrested in Florida. He was arrested after deputies responded to a disturbance call. Again, this information is just coming in to us.
He will be booked, we're told, at the Seminole County Sheriff's Correctional Facility. We'll continue to monitor the story and bring you the very latest details. But again, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin this summer, has been arrested again in Florida. Details to come as we get them on CNN.
In the meantime, a simple traffic stop turns into a frightening shooting and a high-speed chase of a minivan filled with kids.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open the door!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: The mom behind the wheel was pulled over by New Mexico State police for alleged speeding. But the situation quickly turned violent and the dash cam video shows that the officers opening fire on the van as it sped away with five children inside. CNN's Miguel Marquez shows us how this wild pursuit ended.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): How in the world does a routine traffic stop turn into this? In that minivan, Oriana Farrell and her five kids, one as young as 6 years old, from Memphis, Tennessee, on vacation in Northern New Mexico, pulled over for doing 71 in a 55 zone. Farrell and the state police officer argue over a ticket, Farrell pleading with the officer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn the vehicle off for me.
MARQUEZ: What happens next shocking, Farrell takes off, police chasing her down, she gets out of the van, they argue again. When the officer tries to arrest her, she heads for the door.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn around and face your vehicle. Ma'am, listen to me.
MARQUEZ: That's when Farrell's 14-year-old son jumps out of the van. He struggles with and distracts the police as his mother jumps back into the van then he does, too. Backup arrives, tension escalating quickly and violently. Police take a baton to the window trying to extract the family members. Farrell takes off again, then this.
Three shots fired into the minivan, packed with kids. Farrell in full-on flee mode, breaking seemingly every rule in the traffic book. Finally, she stops at a hotel in Taos, New Mexico, both she and her son arrested, among other things, booked for fleeing, child abuse and battery. Farrell and her 14-year-old son now out on bond, her remaining four kids in state custody. Miguel Marquez, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: OK, so Oriana Farrell faces several charges including child abuse, but her attorney says it is the officers who endangered Farrell's five children. Joining us is a former police detective, Steve Kardian. Steve, so the local paper has quoted the judge as saying, he's concerned about the nature of these charges after reviewing the dash cam video. So who put whom in danger here?
STEVE KARDIAN, FORMER POLICE DETECTIVE: Well, it's inherent. We know as law enforcement personnel, we don't shoot at a moving vehicle. The probability we're going to shoot out the tires is like nonexistent, and we have to account for every bullet. However, I mean, what kind of mom places her children in this type of danger, driving a 100-miles an hour for a 16-miles an hour over the speed limit?
LEMON: And aren't you told not to get out of the car? Do we know -- I guess the dash cam video shows. There's sound on the video. They were trying to arrest her, correct?
KARDIAN: Yes.
LEMON: So then, did the officers follow the proper protocol if someone gets out and they're not exactly doing what you want them to do. KARDIAN: They have to react moment to moment. They did up to the point where the shots were fired. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have done that exact thing, breaking out a window for a belligerent, resistant person.
LEMON: Here's what a local paper cites. Documents that quote Farrell's attorney as saying his client was flat out scared that something was going to happen to her children and that is the reason she filed a plausible defense. Is that a plausible defense?
KARDIAN: Absolutely not. It's complete ignorance of the law. It's simple. You don't -- you don't escalate the situation, take off. You obey the officer's orders, take your punishment in terms of a ticket and get on with your life.
LEMON: You don't think it escalated and all of a sudden, the officer started to bash out the window and she gets scared like, my gosh what is going on?
KARDIAN: It was necessary to do that. He wanted to extract the 14- year-old. Number two, he wanted to make sure that car couldn't continue. He had already seen she was traveling at a high rate of speed, disregarding his orders. So she just further endangered those children.
LEMON: So then what do you do? If you're an officer there, you can't get -- they're both back in the car. You're trying to bash the windows out. You can't. What do you do in that particular situation?
KARDIAN: There is no easy solution. They did correctly. They followed protocol up until the point that the shots were fired. He can't pull the door off its hinging.
LEMON: Do you let them go and then chase them or call for the next municipality? What do you do?
KARDIAN: You don't lose sight of the vehicle. You can't take it upon that individual is going to stop their car somewhere down the road. So you maintain a visual. A lot of times the supervisor that's watching that pursuit or monitoring it will say, OK, back off. It becomes too dangerous for the entire public, they will call them off. In this case, they didn't.
LEMON: What happens in this particular situation? You say the officers overreacted. The woman obviously acted improperly. The 14- year-old should not have gotten out of the car. Should she be charged with endangering her child?
KARDIAN: Because of all the bad publicity to the mom, to the police department, I think there will be a plea arrangement. They're going to believe her that she panicked. They'll believe the officer when he fired, he was acting in the spur of the moment and his intention was to stop the vehicle from continuing on their way, endangering the five kids, the users of the highway, and the officers.
LEMON: That's crazy. All right, thank you, Steve Kardian. We appreciate you here on CNN.
Coming up next, Brooke Baldwin reporting live from tornado-ravaged Washington, Illinois, we'll go back to her and for more on the devastating storms and tornadoes that hit the Midwest this weekend. We'll be back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: We're back here live in Washington, Illinois, just about 150 miles southwest of Chicago. I wanted to show you this live picture here as we're looking at what remains of many, many homes, just gone. You can see a gentleman inside of potentially his own home. And I just wanted to show you this picture because it's obviously his kitchen, what remains of his kitchen, the back of the refrigerator, the sink. The area he used to potentially cook his family meals, and now exposed to the rest of this after this EF-4 tornado devastating this town of 15,000, right around late morning yesterday.
This is really in talking to so many people here, quite a faith-based community, and a lot of people were in church and were huddled in church, huddled in basements of homes. Really hoping and waiting for the worst to be over. In total, one person has perished here in the town. Six total fatalities in the Midwest region after the tornadoes ripped through this area.
Despite the devastation and tragedy, one remarkable story is emerging from the aftermath of just this absolute mess. It's about this man by the name of Robert Smith. So rescue crews, they managed to pull him from the remains of his home. Imagine crews saying in rubble like this, finding someone, hearing someone after the storm caused this home to collapse right around him. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERT SMITH, TORNADO SURVIVOR: Just sitting there watching TV and pretty soon, the wind picked up. And it sounded like a train coming down the street. Next thing I knew, there was stuff hitting the house. My wife says, what's that hitting the house? I say it's that tree out front. She got out of her chair and started for the stairway and made it to the top of the step and that's where she was at.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And --
SMITH: My boy was in the basement and he was coming up the steps to help her down the steps.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And basically, the whole house just collapsed around you?
SMITH: Yes. I watched the door and I watched the bricks and I watched the picture window. Everything wrapped around me and I didn't realize it, but it was the garage wall that fell over, and punctured the spot on my lung on my right side.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Actually punctured your lung? SMITH: No. I had chest x-ray, and nothing was broke, just that puncture. Looked like the doctor said it looked like a .22 shot and then my head was bleeding so bad I just bled all over my clothes. And it was pouring down rain and kept just getting wet. And a good friend of mine, he come in, we grabbed a piece of panelling or wall board, threw it over that wall and over me. And we laid underneath that and the rain come down.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: It's just incredible, story like this. Despite winds up to 190 miles per hour in some areas, yesterday, the lives that were saved because these sirens went off and people paid attention. And we have crews here with CNN. We're covering the story for you here in Illinois, in Indiana. But I got into town early this morning, and I wanted to share a story from a town called Diamond, Illinois.
I had this incredible opportunity to meet this woman and her family. Her home is gone, but she's resilient, but it's tough for her as a mother with little ones because she's sitting there telling her babies everything is going to be OK. Through tears, she's wondering if it will be or not. Her compelling story is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Back to our storm coverage here in the United States in just a moment, but we're still following the devastating aftermath of Supertyphoon Haiyan. With nearly 4,000 people dead, millions displaced, the scope of destruction is simply too hard to imagine. CNN's Carl Pinhall has a terrifying new perspective.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARL PINHALL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Look around you and imagine how it must have felt standing here on Magallanes Street in Tacloban City as a towering wall of water raced in from the ocean. But take a look, the pictures speak clearly for themselves. Wherever you look, international organizations and government rescue teams are hard at work, pulling away debris, still looking for bodies of the dead, trying to bring relief to the survivors.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: An amazing perspective. Thank you, Carl. Up next, Brooke Baldwin reports live from tornado damaged Washington, Illinois. A special report, the next hour of the CNN NEWSROOM begins right now.
BALDWIN: Don, thank you so much.
