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Tiger Kills Seven People In India; Supermarket Shooting Leaves Three Dead; The End Of Shopping As We Know It?; Professor To Company Behind Spill: "To Hell With You"

Aired January 16, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: The bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. A killer is sowing terror across the swath of Northern India. In just the past two weeks, seven victims and the killer has left her mark, that's right, her mark alongside the bodies. You see this? You can't quite make it out. I am here to tell you, this is a tiger paw.

This is the body of one of the tiger's victims. A woman killed 11 days ago. Local police have called in hunters. They have put them on cherry pickers, giving them orders to kill should they see this tiger. Reports say residents have gotten so scared that many are staying indoors. The tiger is believed to have fled a nature reserve about 70 miles away.

The 2014 is just over two weeks old and we couldn't help but notice how ordinary places that most of us wouldn't think twice about have been scenes of extraordinary acts of violence. This latest case overnight, a grocery store.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. TRENT SMITH, INDIANA STATE POLICE: We live in that world. There is not a day that goes by it seems like anymore where, you know, we are not learning of a school shooting or at a business or you know, unfortunately we hope that this would never come to our hometown and here it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: The backdrop. This is it. Martin's Supermarket, that's in Elk Cart, Indiana. A 22-year-old man by the name of Shawn Behr shot up the place killing two women there overnight. Officers killed Behr afterwards. They say he fired on them. No idea if he knew the victims, a shopper and a store employee. One man whose mother had just got taken off the overnight shift was there at the scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH MCCREARY, SON OF STORE EMPLOYEE: It's scary. It is. How do I know I'm doing something and they will start shooting up the place and an employee of mine or I got injured, you know, you just never know. It kind of shakes you a little bit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So a grocery store overnight and then there is this. Two days ago, a 12-year-old boy allegedly went to the school with a sawed off shotgun and shot a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. According to one gun control group, this is now the 30th school shooting. This is the list since Sandy Hook in December of 2012 and now another case of grade schoolers with gunshot wounds. How does a teen even know how to saw off a shotgun? It sounds so wrong. Berenda Middle School in Roswell, New Mexico trying to get back on track, today classes resumed.

And then on Monday, the third shooting in less than a business week makes us wonder is any place safe? A man texting at a movie theater during the previews in Florida ends up dead, allegedly shot by a retired police officer. Apparently, it wasn't the first time defendant Curtis Reeves had lashed out in a movie theater. One couple said he couldn't calm down after the wife sent a text just two weeks before this killing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIRA DIXON, ENCOUNTERED SHOOTING SUSPECT: It bothered me that he was being -- it was strange. It was odd.

MIKE DIXON, ENCOUNTERED SHOOTING SUSPECT: It was just strange because he was so irritated about something so small. It seemed like every minute little thing that would happen just drove him berserk.

JAMIRA DIXON: Flaring the hands and grabbing his head.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Reeves attorney has not responded to CNN's calls, but a grocery store and a movie theater and a school in once week.

Coming up, Best Buy's stock tanks, JC Penney shutting down 33 stores, is retail in America changing before our very eyes?

Plus West Virginia English professor has an incredibly emotional message for anyone responsible for the chemical spill. He said to hell with you. He says a lot more than that. We will talk to him live coming up.

But first Julia Clukey is passionate about the luge. She never let a serious brain disorder keep her off track. Here is CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta with this week's "Human Factor."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As she jumps into the sled, Julia Clukey has one focus, getting down that track as fast as possible.

JULIA CLUKEY, 2010 OLYMPIAN, 2014 OLYMPIC ALTERNATE: The speed is definitely a big adrenaline rush. GUPTA: Clukey says her life experiences helped give her perspective when she is on the track.

CLUKEY: I think any time something happens to you, you have to decide what you are going to do to get there and then stick to the plan every day.

GUPTA: And Clukey has had plenty of life obstacles. Her father passed when she was 19. She has had training injuries. Her knees, torn meniscus and ACL to herniated disks in her neck, but she overcame them all to make her first Olympic team in 2010.

CLUKEY: It was a great honor, you know, for myself and for my family. You know, they had seen all the good and bad days, highs and lows.

GUPTA: But her Olympic high was short-lived.

CLUKEY: I was diagnosed with Arnold Chiari syndrome shortly after the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

GUPTA: Chiari is a disorder in which the fluid around her brain doesn't circulate properly.

CLUKEY: A lot of symptoms that I was having were severe headaches and pressure on the lower part of my skull and a lot of problems with the right side of my body.

GUPTA: For her, surgery was the only option.

CLUKEY: They go in and they removed a little under a centimeter of my skull bone to create access for the spinal fluid to flow freely.

GUPTA: She didn't let that stop her though, just 14 months later, she was back on the sled.

CLUKEY: I never lot of sight of where I wanted to be after my surgery and that was back competing in the sport.

GUPTA: While Clukey fell short of making her second Olympics by just a fraction of a second, she stayed sharp as the team's first alternate.

CLUKEY: I wake up every day knowing that I'm going to fly, knowing that I'm training for something I love. I think it's a big gift.

GUPTA: It's that gift that Clukey wants to make sure other young girls like her also get the experience.

CLUKEY: It's a 10-day camp that focuses on self-confidence and understanding stereotypes and breaking down barriers and being proud of who you are and going after your dreams.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BALDWIN: Times are tough for some of the best known names in retail. You have Best Buy, their stock has been tumbling, down almost 30 percent today after the electronics giant's report on holiday sales. Not enough people shopped at Best Buy. JC Penny is getting rid of 2,000 workers, closing 33 stores just to cut cost there.

Even Lowman's is packing up their dressing rooms. They are going out of business. So what's going on? Is this a hangover from the recession? Are these desperate moves by stores that are just simply falling out of favor or could we maybe witnessing a change in the way we shop. Consumer spending analyst, Hitha Prabhakar, is here to help us figure a way out.

Hitha, welcome. Nice to see you.

HITHA PRABHAKAR, CONSUMER SPENDING ANALYST: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: First of all, what happened to Best Buy because last I read it was in the midst of this turn around and stock was up like 150 percent over the last year? What's changed?

PRABHAKAR: Right. They had implemented this new CEO who was turning everything around. I think two things happen with this stock up. Number one, they over promoted during the holiday. I think they tried to have these promotions to have people come in and shop at that store. Also they were open during Thanksgiving and the cost of having all of those stores opened for earlier hours on Thanksgiving to get people to shop in there really did some damage to the bottom line.

BALDWIN: So that ended up hurting them. Then you have JC Penny laying off a lot of people as we mentioned closing some of its stores. Sears has been on death watch for years. I mean, these are when you think of these stores, these are the main stays of shopping malls across this country. I know a lot of malls aren't doing well. While we are talking this morning, a lot of them are just kind of ghost towns. Do you think malls as institutions are doomed?

PRABHAKAR: I think malls are going through a restructuring and I think part of the reason why is because so much of the shopping is moving online. So we were talking about Best Buy just now. The revenue sunk 2.6 percent because of those holiday numbers. If you look at the online numbers, they made $1.3 billion on online sales and those sales were up 23 percent.

BALDWIN: So what happened to the malls if we are shopping online?

PRABHAKAR: Right. Well, that's the thing. A lot of these developers that I had spoken to were saying that malls just need to restructure themselves. There is no interest in going to malls anymore. There is nothing interesting to get us to the malls. Foot traffic over the holiday fell according to Shopper Track, 15 percent. No new indoor malls have been built since 2006.

So developers are now trying to figure out ways to get people to get into those malls. They are saying it really has to do with the stores. People are shopping online. They like to look at things online as they are shopping so having that sort of interactiveness in stores is one way ironically to get people to come into those stores.

BALDWIN: I'm trying to think of when the last time I was in a mall actually shopping.

PRABHAKAR: The last time I was in the mall, Brooke, was I think it might be in 1985 -- shopping. I do, do channel checks though.

BALDWIN: I might have been looking at shoes a few months ago, but that's about it. Hitha Prabhakar, thank you very much for joining me. It's amazing, the evolution of shopping.

Coming up next, my next guest lives in West Virginia and he wrote a stunning, beautifully crafted response here to a lot of people including the chemical spill and the folks who did this, talking about the tainted West Virginia water. This has been an issue for more than a week now. He has a message for politicians and corporations, anyone involved in the spill. He says to hell with you. Not mincing words. He joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: How much worse can this chemical leak in West Virginia get? Well, how about this? An urgent warning is out now for pregnant women in nine West Virginia counties. Here is what they are being told. Don't drink the tap water. This new warning applies even in places where the water has been declared safe. Friends and family of the folks who live here now have resorted to driving in special deliveries, bottled water, look at these, cases and case of them.

But one man was hit by this wave of anger as he drove into his home town. He pinned the "Huffington Post" editorial and it reads this, in part, "To hell with you all for continuing a coal became chemical to exploit the lax poor enforced safety regulations here so that you could do your business in the cheapest manner possible by shortcutting the health and quality of life not only of your workers, but of everybody who lives here."

There is so much more to this piece. Joining me now the man who this from Buchanan, West Virginia, Eric Waggoner, associate professor of American literature and cultural studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Eric, welcome.

ERIC WAGGONER, WEST VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE: Hi, Brooke. I remember you as the morning anchor on WOWK.

BALDWIN: Great to have you on. I told you we are chatting in commercial break. I was in West Virginia for a number of years and I have many friends still back there and they have all been posting your call. I mean, for them. It seems to me it is spot on. I mean, Eric, you write about your rage. Describe it for me.

WAGGONER: On the Internet. What's interesting to me about this is the e-mails and the phone calls I've gotten from people from West Virginia and around the world, all around the world indeed who have said that the piece seems to say something that (inaudible) a lot of people thinking for a long time. I hope the piece was more articulate than the hell with you, but there was no way around the rage and all I wanted to do was sound off. I thought maybe 37 micrograms. I had no idea it would get as far as it has.

WAGGONER: I just tweeted it out. People, take a look at my Twitter @brookebcnn so they can read it in its entirety. You pointed out, Eric, growing up there, you said you are no Dewey eyed innocent about chemical leaks that you say they were regular occurrence when you were a kid. So tell me what makes this one so different.

WAGGONER: You know, we can never predict what event is going to spark this in us. There was one occasion where the town that I lived in was evacuated for a couple of days. We went through chemical spills and evacuations from high schools and so forth when I was growing up. It seems to be part of a natural fabric.

But this for a long time, you know, I include myself in that essay as well. I mean, to hell with me, for a long I thought of loving this place which I do. It's conflicted and complicated, but it is love. For a long time I thought loving this place meant accepting the pain and loving the tragedy that we so often felt. It's part of the basic character. It's been a long time since I felt that. Women don't drink the same tap water. No response to that on my gut level. You can't end there but that's where it began.

BALDWIN: So that's stunning you say to hell with you as well. You include West Virginians in this. But first let me quote as you are experiencing this full body rush of rage as you bring bottled water to you family in Charleston and say the hell with everyone. You can ask me how I can stand to live in a place like this so dirty and unhealthy and uneducated.

To hell with everyone who has ever asked me why don't I just leave and quit and go to one of the other thousands job I supposed you imagined widely available here like it never occurred to us. Like if only we had listened as you explained safety hazards and we suddenly recognized something that hospital been on the radar until now. But you also condemned fellow West Virginians, Eric, tell me why.

WAGGONER: You know, the thing that is really striking to me about this is it's a complicated thing. Like any other history. It's a synergistic blending of politics and environmental issues. There is an element of our characters that for so long was entrench with this idea of sacrifice and it's something that was noble.

That's really, really problematic in a hard part of the essay to write. The thing that makes me angry about this is how deeply it is in the fact that West Virginians want to go to work. Despite the ridiculous and absurd stereotypes, this is a place that placed a significant value on doing the work, making something happen.

If the company came in, an industry came in and said to the people, we are going to do this work. We are going to need you to help us do this work and in exchange for that, we are going to make that this is conducted in the safest possible way.

(Inaudible) not only for you, but for your family and for the people who live in that area. You have no idea what good will and labor restraint a company like that could call. You can change a tire and you have a friend for life. That guy will send you a Christmas card.

BALDWIN: I can vouch for that having lived there for a couple of years. Hopefully this horrendous incident can help change that culture and everything you mentioned in this piece. I felt your rage and I was so stunned to have you on the show. Eric Waggoner, West Virginia Wesleyan, thank you so much. Good luck.

Coming up for the first time in U.S. history today, a controversial set of lethal drugs were used to kill a man and the scene if you read about this, it got very disturbing very quickly. We will tell you what happened. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Macklemore turns the daily commute into run time and Freudian slip. It's a priceless piece of history. Here's today's CNN Pop.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN (voice-over): The best commute ever. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis hopped on New York City bus, franked up a boom box and took these passengers by surprises. Hidden cameras caught the whole thing. This is all a run up to the Grammy awards. Take a close look at this receipt, $1600 for breakfast for two at a Waffle House. Jim Andrews wished he had looked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I sign it and I look at it again and it says $1660.61. I almost had a heart attack. A stuck cash register key inflated Andrew's $16 bill. Waffle House gave him a refund.

Sales are heating up for the world's hottest pepper. The Carolina Reaper is what it's called. It's 300 times hotter than a jalapeno. How hot is that hot? Ask this TV reporter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's good. That's good!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's all pepper.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very little vinegar and lots and lots of pepper. None of that other stuff.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm actually dizzy.

BALDWIN: Who knew the father of psycho analysis is so hot. That's the hot you are thinking. Burglars tried to steal Sigmund Freud's ashes, but they only ended up breaking the ashes' ancient Greek urn. The urn is priceless, 2,300 years old, a gift from Napoleon's great grand niece. Security at the London Cemetery is under review. And that's today's CNN Pop.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BALDWIN: Now to a significant development in an ongoing investigation that may link NFL star, Aaron Hernandez to the double homicide in Boston back in 2012. CNN national correspondent, Susan Candiotti, joins me on this. Susan, what are Boston police saying?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, for the first time, Brooke, Boston police are suggesting that former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez may have pulled the trigger in the unsolved double homicide in Boston back in 2012. We are getting this from a search warrant and an official affidavit that was unsealed today in Connecticut.

Now this is how it read in part, quote, "There is probable cause to believe that Aaron Hernandez was operating a suspected vehicle used in the shooting homicide and may have been the shooter.