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U.S. Congressman Resurfaces; Alleged Maryland Mall Shooter's Journal Found; Texas Woman Missing

Aired January 27, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Today it gets right to the point, "causes lung cancer, heart disease," and more.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And we continue on, hour two. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Want to begin here with this new information we're getting about the deadly weekend shooting at the mall in Columbia, Maryland. The mall reopened just a couple of hours ago for the very first time since the shooting. Two people were killed Saturday inside a skateboard store.

The shooter has been identified as Darion Aguilar. He shot himself after opening fire.

And Joe Johns is on the phone with me.

Joe, tell me about this journal that belonged to this young man. What do we know was inside?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, in a situation like this, this is where police who are left try to make sense out of something that is really senseless.

We are getting a sense, if you will, of frustration from the police. They do have the journal and they say this individual who accomplished this shooting at Columbia Mall expressed general dissatisfaction with his life.

But speaking with the authorities not too long ago, they told me that they didn't find anything that really gave him a clue about motive or why the individual did this. And we may have a sound bite now from the police chief here, Bill McMahon. I talked to him just a little while ago. Can we listen to that?

BALDWIN: We do. Let's roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL MCMAHON, HOWARD COUNTY POLICE CHIEF: We retrieved a number of items in evidence and included in that was a journal. In the journal, there are writings that are clear he is unhappy with his life and where he is right now.

JOHNS: OK, but no clear indication as to a plan or to a motive or anything like that?

MCMAHON: No. And, again, I have not seen the journal. Our investigators are still working through that, but nothing to point us towards motive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: What we know is that this young man purchased a firearm in December and then he went back and searched more ammunition apparently from the very gun store in Maryland. We know he walked in to the mall with some unsophisticated small explosive device along with backpacks -- along with fireworks that were in a backpack.

There is video, surveillance video that shows part of the shooting. But as to why he did this and why he shot the people he shot inside the store, it's just not clear to them right now, Brooke.

BALDWIN: We don't know about a connection to the two victims, Joe?

JOHNS: No, we do not.

He went inside a store called Zumiez, which is an apparel store for people who do skateboarding and that type of thing, and started shooting. Why he did it and why he shot the people he did, it's not clear. No clear connection, no clear relationship between him and the two young people he killed, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You are there at the Columbia Mall that just opened, as we said, a couple hours ago. Describe the scene for me.

JOHNS: It's busy. Quite frankly, there were a lot of people inside the food court, which is not far from where the shooting occurred. The store itself is actually boarded up and you can't even see the entrance of it.

But a lot of people here, who said they were just here to show support for the mall. It's a very well-liked place. There are also a lot of public officials, including United States Congress Elijah Cummings, who dropped by. People are trying to show support for the stores and the businesses and the sense that business as usual is returning to the Columbia Mall. Nonetheless, the authorities really would like to get to the bottom of why. And it's very tough.

BALDWIN: Joe Johns in Columbia, Maryland, for us, Joe, thank you very much.

And now to this one out of Texas. This congressman has just resurfaced after dropping out of sight for much of the past month. Representative Steve Stockman of Texas has missed a lot of votes this year. Now he is back and he is blasting the media for even wondering where he has been.

Brian Todd, you are on this one for us today. This is a head- scratcher, if I may, because it's not often a member of a statehouse just disappears. Do we know where he has been?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, he says, Brooke, he has been in Russia, Egypt and Israel for the past 10 days. We are trying to see if anyone can give us more answers on this, Congressman Stockman himself, his staff and his relatives and members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, anyone.

So far, all we have gotten is a news release today from Congressman Stockman's campaign office taunting the media. In that press release, it says the congressman returned today from a 10-day official congressional visit to Egypt, Israel and Russia, which it said he took with State Department officials. The press release said Stockman was with the media and conducted press conferences with State Department officials in every city he visited.

The press release, which is very strange, said this -- quote -- "Reporters knew I was on an official State Department trip, but refused to admit the truth because it would have spoiled their bizarre stories. We decided to hold out and see how long reporters would pretend they didn't know I was on official business."

Now, again, we have tried to get the State Department to verify that he was holding those news conferences with them. They told us to call the House Foreign Affairs Committee. We have not done that. We have e-mailed them. We have not heard back yet. We also called and e- mailed Congressman Stockman's office to see if they can explain this further.

He has not been on the campaign trail. He is running against Senator John Cornyn. He has missed 17 straight House votes. He has been at MIA for at least two weeks. The one thing we have gotten, my colleague Lisa Desjardins reached out to the offices of other members of Congress who were in that delegation.

But again they're being pretty mum about this as well, not giving many details, other than one congressman's office, Dana Rohrabacher, saying the delegation left on January 16, got back to the U.S. yesterday -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. And not statehouse. He's a member of U.S. Congress. You mentioned John Cornyn. In that statehouse, a member of U.S. congressman, we mentioned he is running against the Senate seat. What are the chances are actually winning?

Not very good. From all indications he is well behind in most polls and doesn't have nearly the money that Senator John Cornyn has. He is running out of time and the primary is in March. Cornyn is fairly conservative, but he is being run against from the right by Congressman Stockman. It is a challenge from the right. But Congressman Stockman doesn't have much time in the primary.

BALDWIN: Brian Todd, we will look for your reporting on "THE SITUATION ROOM," as always. Thank you, sir.

BALDWIN: And talking money now, stocks really the big story this week, as January is usually an indicator of how Wall Street will fare for the rest of the year.

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

BALDWIN: And coming up here, this is an interview. I have seen it twice over. It broke my heart watching it. Cannot get this out of my head today. You will hear from a state senator who describes being attacked by his son who he loved dearly, being stabbed multiple times. It's a chilling look at American's broken mental health system.

Plus, find out why Prince is suing his fans $1 million each over some videos. This case could impact every music fan out there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Slashed and stabbed repeatedly by his own son. Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds on "60 Minutes" last night bearing brutal scars, you will see them on his face, describing for the first time the attack, his escape, and the devastating suicide of his 24-year-old son, who had been struggling for years with mental illness.

The attack happening at Deeds' rural home in Bath County, Virginia, the day after he took his son to the emergency room and was told there are beds available for your son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CREIGH DEEDS (D), VIRGINIA STATE SENATOR: The next morning,, I felt like there would be a confrontation. I turned my back, had this feed thing in my hands, and he was just on me.

QUESTION: He attacked you?

DEEDS: He got me twice, stabbed me twice.

QUESTION: With a knife?

DEEDS: The state police told me they found the knife. I turned around and I said, Bud, what's going on? And he just kept coming at me. I said, gosh, I love you so much. I said don't make this any worse than it is. He just kept coming. And he just kept -- I was bleeding a good bit. But he turned around and he started walking toward the house.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was just a piece of that interview.

Just broke my heart, Doris Fuller, watching this on CBS. Doris the executive director at the Treatment Advocacy Center. You have been on with us several times as we discuss mental illness in this country.

Welcome back.

DORIS FULLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TREATMENT ADVOCACY CENTER: Thanks, Brooke. BALDWIN: When you look back post-1960s and a lot the larger mental institutions were closed and adequate facilities were never fully built, which leaves a lot of mentally ill kids and parents with this one option, emergency rooms.

FULLER: It's funny you would say emergency rooms in the same context with, yes, we shut the hospitals.

It's kind of like what we have done in America is we closed our hospitals which were for people in crisis and people who needed help with mental illness. And by doing that, it is sort of like we turned our mental health system into a hospital with no E.R., no place for crisis, just a place for people who could walk in and volunteer and say I want elective surgery, but not for people who had a heart attack or a broken leg or a car accident.

And so now what we have is we have dismantled the system. Creigh Deeds said the system killed my son. He's right. The system killed his son, kills thousands of people every year. We have closed our hospitals. Now where do you go if you have a loved one in crisis? You go to the E.R.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: You go to the E.R., which is what I think CBS did this phenomenal job of explaining, because the issue is you can only stay there as you prove to be an imminent threat, either harm to yourself or others. Oftentimes, that means you are out of the E.R. in hours, sometimes a couple of days.

They sat down and they talked to the group of parents. One mother said she was at the E.R. and she wanted to be able to keep her daughter there, and the social worker apparently said, ma'am, we can do that, but you have to hand your daughter over to the state. She was like no way am I doing that.

But that is an example of how broken it is.

FULLER: We have several levels of problems. You are homing in on them.

We don't have a system. Once you get to the E.R., because we don't have a system, there often are no beds to take someone to. Then we don't have laws that recognize that people need help before they're dangerous. And then in most states, we actually do have laws on the books that would make it possible to get people like these kids in these E.R.s into treatment, and instead of using them, the system throws up its hands and says, well, they are not dangerous. We can't do anything.

That's often not true. We put the laws from each state on our Web site, because people need to know the laws in their states. There are ways to use your laws to get treatment for your loved one.

BALDWIN: We could do a whole show on this and we have of the issues and possible solutions. But here's the other thing, because the parents in the "60 Minutes" were asked what is the biggest difference between your kids who suffer some sort of mental illness and let's say kids who have cancer? The one mom said sympathy. There is no sympathy for these children with a mental illness. There's such a stigma in this country. How do we change it?

FULLER: That's a really good question.

Sometimes, when I was look out from where I sit, it feels like America doesn't care about its brothers and sisters who have mental illness. We care about lots of people. We don't care about people with mental illness. And until that changes...

BALDWIN: Because we don't want to talk about it.

FULLER: We don't want to talk about it.

When you look out at the homeless on the streets, they may not be the most attractive, telegenic people, so we don't race out to help them. It's just -- it's a combination of things. But, really, as a country, until we say we care, we want a system to take care of our most vulnerable citizens, this is going to happen over and over and over again.

BALDWIN: Well, out of tragedy, we know that state Senator Creigh Deeds cares. They have already come back in session.

And I know two things, two pieces of legislation was he wants to extend emergency custody in E.R. from six to 24 hours and then create this computer database that shows where available beds are and psychiatric beds statewide.

I want you, Doris, to give me -- you give me one concrete example of something you would want to change.

FULLER: Well, and Creigh Deeds' bills are good.

Actually, 24 hours is still not long enough. I would like us to have a set of laws that recognizes when people need treatment, they deserve to get treatment. We don't wait for heart attack patients to be on the death's door before we give them treatment. I would like to see every state say, we need a treatment law.

We need a need for treatment law that says, when somebody is deteriorating when they need help, they get help. We don't wait until they are dangerous. We don't wait until they're dead.

BALDWIN: Doris Fuller, executive director at the Treatment Advocacy Center, thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

FULLER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up, Florida Congressman Trey Radel announcing his resignation today. But when he returned from his stint in rehab after being caught with cocaine, he seemed ready to give Congress another go. Why is he stepping down?

Plus, a woman goes missing in a small Texas town after traveling the world with her husband for two years. Investigators say she was not a victim of foul play. But no one seems to have an answer either, not even her husband. That story is coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK)

BALDWIN: A man vows to continue looking for his wife, even though authorities in Texas are giving up.

Leanne Bearden disappeared more than a week ago after going out for a walk. The couple had just gotten back from a two-year trip around the world. They planned to look for jobs back home in Colorado. But crews are now calling off the search for this woman.

And Paul Venema from our affiliate KSAT has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL VENEMA, KSAT REPORTER (voice-over): The couple was visiting relatives here before moving to their home to Colorado.

JOSH BEARDEN, HUSBAND: She came upstairs and told me that she was going to go for a walk and she would be back in a little bit.

VENEMA: Since then, he has had no clue as to the whereabouts of his wife, Leanne.

BEARDEN: She had at most $60 cash. And she had her wallet. So, she had her credit cards in there, which I have checked.

VENEMA: Friends, relatives and volunteers are searching the area. Garden Ridge police are carrying it as a missing-persons case.

BEARDEN: She needs help. And I know she is in the area. She didn't catch a bus or go to Omaha or anything ridiculous like that.

VENEMA (on camera): This is rugged, unforgiven country, a challenge to even the most experienced hiker, but something that Bearden is confident that his wife could handle. He speculated on what may have happened.

BEARDEN: She went out for a hike and saw something that she thought was interesting and went up and went to go check it out.

VENEMA (voice-over): His worst fear is that, in doing so, she took a fall. Bearden's frustration is that that's all he can do right now, wonder and worry.

BEARDEN: You know, the day times, I'm strongish. The night times are awful.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Paul Venema from KSAT reporting for us.

The affiliate says investigators are confident that she was not a victim of foul play.

Coming up: A millionaire investor makes a comparison between the wealthiest Americans and Jews persecuted by the Nazis. Yeah. Needless to say, that analogy is stirring up a lot of controversy. We will debate that sentiment, not the analogy.

Plus, the University of North Carolina apologizing for fake classes that some say its athletes took to make good grades. We have that story for you coming up.

You are watching CNN.

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