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Furious Father of Shooting Victim Demands Action; Police Had Contact with Rodger Multiple Times; Obama's Surprise Trip to Afghanistan; Crisis in Ukraine; Recall Crisis Will Define Barra's G.M. Legacy

Aired May 26, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, thanks so much. NEWSROOM starts now.

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COSTELLO: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello, thanks so much for joining me. This morning in coffee shops and across college campuses this man's deadly rampage is reviving the debate over gun control. He'd been dogged by mental health issues almost all his life, yet was able to legally buy three firearms, his murder weapons.

The father of one of his victims, Chris Martinez, is heartbroken, and he's outraged. He's demanding action this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD MARTINEZ, VICTIM'S FATHER: I can't tell you how angry I am. It's just awful. And no parent should have to go through this. No parent, to have a kid die because in this kind of a situation. What has changed? Have we learned nothing? These things are going to continue until somebody does something. So where the hell is the leadership?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The killer's parents learned of their son's plans and raced to stop him. On the way there, they learned the massacre had already begun. CNN's Kyung Lah has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is where the rampage began, in the gunman's apartment. Three people stabbed to death. Detectives describe it as a horrific crime scene.

ELLIOT RODGER, SHOOTER: The supreme gentleman.

LAH: From here, investigators say he got into his BMW and, just as he predicted in his YouTube videos, would head first to a sorority.

RODGER: On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB, and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blond (EXPLETIVE) I see inside there. LAH (on camera): Four blocks from his apartment, the Alpha Phi sorority. They heard loud knocking coming from the door. They did not open it. So the gunman turned to three women who were standing over here, shot and killed Veronika Weiss and Katherine Cooper; another woman seriously injured.

Less than two blocks away, the Ivy Deli mart. Surveillance video from inside the store captures the barrage of bullets. There's another victim killed, Christopher Martinez who was just out for a sandwich.

MARTINEZ: What about Chris' right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say stop this madness? We don't have to live like this!

LAH: At this point, the pace is picking up. Witnesses say he's driving his BMW to people on the street. One person is shot outside of these apartments, gunfire smashing windows. It is everywhere.

(GUNFIRE)

LAH: A few blocks away the gunman shoots at a deputy and misses. Officers now in pursuit. He makes it a few more blocks, striking a bicyclist. A couple blocks away, he shoots three more people until there's a gun battle with deputies.

It's four deputies who run across this park and fire into the suspect's car. They believe they've hit him in the hip, but he continues to drive. He's able to travel a few more blocks until he strikes a bicyclist, that bicyclist hit so hard, he caves in the windshield, the BMW crashing outside this apartment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the driver get pulled out of the car. He looked very hurt. To me he was either unconscious or already dead.

LAH: Investigators say an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound is what ended Elliot Rodger's life. His motive, his plan, all known to us, because he did exactly what he set out to do.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Isla Vista, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: That heartbroken father you heard from in that report, Richard Martinez has much, much more to say about the son he lost in that deli and the anguish no other parent should face. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTINEZ: He's our only child. He died on Friday. I'm 61 years old now. I'll never have another child. He's gone. So the reason I'm doing this right now is to try to see if we can do anything to make my son's death mean something. Because that's all we've got.

LAH: He's not going to grow up to be a man to work in the world. What did we lose? MARTINEZ: I think he had the capacity to be much more than we were. He was articulate, determined, nice, and tough. If there's all these things in the media about the shooter and there's nothing about the victims, then it sends the wrong message. And the people need to understand that real people died here and they need to know, put faces and names and histories to the people who died to make it real for them.

LAH: The politicians after Sandy Hook swore they would do something.

MARTINEZ: We're all proud to be Americans. But what kind of message does it send to the world when we have such a -- such a rudderless bunch of idiots in government. I can't tell you how angry I am. It's just awful. And no parent should have to go through this. No parent, to have a kid die because in this kind of a situation. What has changed? Have we learned nothing? These things are going to continue until somebody does something.

So where the hell is the leadership? Where the hell are these people who elect to Congress and we spend so much money on. These people are getting rich sitting in Congress. And what do they do? They don't take care of our kids. My kid died because nobody responded to what occurred at Sandy Hood. Those parents lost little kids. It's bad enough that I lost 20 years, but I had 20 years with my son. That's all I had, but those people lost their children at six and seven years old. How do you think they feel? And who is trying to comfort them now, who is doing anything for them now? Who is standing up for those kids who died back then in an elementary school, and why wasn't something done? It's outrageous.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Powerful stuff, right? CNN's Sara Sidner covered this story through the weekend. She joins us from outside the sheriff's department in Santa Barbara.

Good morning, Sara. No matter where you stand in this gun control debate, it's hard to listen to that heartbroken father filled with so much pain and anger. Is there a sense that authorities, that someone, could have done more to prevent this?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Look, that's what a lot of people are talking about today. People don't want to play the blame game right now. But I will tell you this, on campus, some of the students that we spoke with are talking about the fact that they believe that Elliot Rodger, the shooting suspect who was on a killing rampage, would use everything and anything.

He didn't just use a gun. He killed as many people by stabbing them to death as he did shooting them to death. He also used his car as a weapon, running into people, running over people.

We were able to talk to one of the few people on campus that actually had some kind of relationship with a shooter. This is a neighbor who did not want to be identified. He said he lived a couple of doors down from Elliot Rodger and on seven occasions had time to try to talk to him.

He said initially he had tried to get Elliot, who seemed like a very shy, timid guy, to come into the social scene on campus, to go out and have a good time. He said he simply couldn't get him to even have a real conversation, that he muttered, he would only give one-word answers and he would refuse to go out and be social with them.

Then one night, and this is particularly poignant -- one night he said Rodger came home all beat up. His face was black and blue, it was scraped. He said he looked very bad. He asked him what happened. And this is what he said he heard that night from Rodger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF UNIDENTIFIED MALE, NEIGHBOR OF ELLIOT RODGER: He was so emotional. I can't describe how emotional he was.

SIDNER: Shaking and cry?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shaking, adrenaline rush. It was like water faucets. He was saying like I'm going to kill all of those (EXPLETIVE), I'm going to kill all of them, I'm going to kill myself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Absolutely chilling words considering what happened. And that's what the neighbor said. He said, at the time, this timid guy who was a slight gentleman, he said he was always very quiet, often stared off in the distance, but he never believed that he would actually go through with something like this.

And it's poignant because the sheriff's deputies say that was the very first contact they had with Elliot Rodger. He was in the hospital, called the deputies saying he had been attacked. It turned out, according to the neighbor, that he was actually the aggressor, as he described it, in the situation at a party where he was trying to get a girl to talk to him. She refused. He got sort of aggressive towards her and some guys tried to push him out of the party and that is when the fight broke out.

But we know that deputies had several contacts with him, the first one being that one. There were two more. The last one, several deputies went to his apartment because his mother called the sheriff's department worried about his mental health.

Here's how the sheriff responded when people asked what more could you have done to try to prevent this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF BILL BROWN, SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: It's a delicate question, and it's a delicate balance. You want to certainly intervene and obviously try to prevent a tragedy such that we've experienced here. On the same token, you don't want to stigmatize people who are seeking treatment for mental illness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: And we know that Elliot Rodger had been seeking treatment since he was 8 years old. Again, obviously, no one thought he would carry out such a devastating attack. Carol.

COSTELLO: The other thing we should point out that when sheriff's deputies visited him that day to check out his mental state, he had the guns and a plan already in place inside of his apartment, right?

SIDNER: That's right. Because that happened in April, just a month ago. And apparently he wrote in his -- as he was going through his manifesto, he wrote about it, saying he thought that that was going to be it, that someone had found out about his plan. And that if they had gone inside, they may have found out what he was about to do.

But the sheriff's deputies who went there said that he was very timid, he was very shy, he was very polite to them and didn't give them any indication -- and they talked to him for a while outside his apartment -- gave them no indication that he was about to do something, that he was an aggressive type of person, or that he was going to harm himself.

So after talking to him a while, they left him alone. They had no search warrant. They had no -- a reason to arrest him, so they left. A month later, this happened. Carol.

COSTELLO: Sara Sidner reporting live for us this morning. We're going to be talking much more about this throughout the morning here in the NEWSROOM.

On to other news now, President Obama back in Washington this morning after surprising U.S. troops in Afghanistan ahead of Memorial Day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know it's a little late. But I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by. To all of you, I'm here on a single mission and that is to thank you for your extraordinary service.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In addition to thanking the troops, Mr. Obama also outlined a continued but limited role in Afghanistan as the U.S. prepares to leave. CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski joins us live with more now from Washington. Good morning.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi Caorl. Right, Just in time for Memorial Day, just in time for trying to fix the VA hospital mess, and just in time for the serious foreign policy planning discussions that are going to happen, as well as big decisions about what America's continued role in Afghanistan will be in two remaining missions -- training Afghan forces and counterterrorism, the president suddenly arrives in Afghanistan before the troops. And one of his advisers says he's been wanting the do this for months, to thank them in person. He did that and, of course, this was a time for him to also to be able to list the accomplishments made by troops there, first and foremost being decimating Taliban leadership. Now, a couple sometimes during his speech, the president got some big cheers, first when he told soldiers, look, this is likely your last tour of duty in Afghanistan.

But the biggest cheers came right here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: By the end of this year, the transition will be complete and Afghans will take full responsibility for their security, and our combat mission will be over. America's war in Afghanistan will come to a responsible end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: So the president didn't mention the VA scandal by name, but he did seem to allude to it when he talked about America's moral obligation, a sacred obligation he called it, to take care of its wounded warriors.

And he also talked about hoping that America would have a bilateral security agreement with Afghanistan which both of the presidential candidates there who are in this run-off election now have said that they are open to, and that would leave a limited force, as the president described it, to preserve the gains of soldiers there.

President Obama made it back here to Washington just in time to take place in Memorial Day events today at Arlington National Cemetery. Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Of course, we'll cover that live 11:00 a.m. Eastern.

Michelle Kosinski, many thanks to you.

KOSINSKI: See you there.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, violence rages in Ukraine even after a presidential election that monitors say reflects the will of the people.

Jim Sciutto in Kiev this morning -- Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: We're in Maidan, the square where the protest movement started. Now, an election for a new leadership for Ukraine. We'll have more right after this break.

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COSTELLO: In Ukraine, he's known as the chocolate king. Now, the billionaire who made his fortune in candy could soon be known by a different title, "president". His name is Petro Poroshenko and he holds a commanding lead over his challengers in the race of the Ukraine's leadership. Poroshenko is vying to be in charge of a country that's been ripped apart by violence, as pro-Russian separatists clash with Ukrainian citizens.

Just this morning, reports of gunfire and an explosion at the Donetsk airport where militants stormed a terminal.

CNN chief national correspondent Jim Sciutto is in Kiev with more.

SCIUTTO: Carol, well, there were a lot of hopes that this election would extinguish the violence here. But it hasn't happened yet. And that's one of the reasons why here in the Maidan, this is the square in central Kiev, the capital where the protest movements started, that remove the pro-Russian president, these people here have no intention of leaving.

You can see the pictures of more than 100 people who were killed here in clashes with the pro-Russian government. They don't want to leave because they want to hold this government to account. Many don't trust Russia to keep its hands out of Ukraine. Now, you have had positive signals from Russian President Vladimir Putin saying he would respect the results of the election. But that remains to be seen.

People here are going to trust those words when they see Russia acting on them in the coming days and weeks.

COSTELLO: I was just going to ask you about that. With the assault on the airport, is Russia really supporting this election?

SCIUTTO: It's a question. You have these pro-Russian separatists operating in the eastern part of the country.

We spent the last couple days there. We saw areas where they supposedly shut down polling stations at gunpoint, intimidating voters. You still have many armed militants. We went through their checkpoints.

There's some question as to how much control Russia has over them now. U.S. officials, European officials, Ukrainian officials saying Russia is directing these groups, supplying them with arms. But going forward, can Russia easily pull them back if that's the desire of the government in Moscow. It's an open question, a lot of these groups operating very independently.

And today's assault on the airport which we flew out of, there's still signs of a dicey situation, particularly in the eastern part of the country.

COSTELLO: Jim Sciutto reporting live from Kiev, many thanks.

Be sure to join Jim this afternoon on Twitter. He'll host a Q&A on the elections and the violence there. Tweet him your questions @jimsciutto with #JiminUkraine.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM: G.M. has a major recall crisis. How much did CEO Mary Barra know about flawed parts and when did she know it?

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COSTELLO: G.M. is saying 47 crashes can be attributed to faulty ignition switches. That's 15 more than the company first confirmed. The faulty switches have been blamed for 13 deaths. And to date, the auto giant has recalled nearly 16 million, that's more than 16 million vehicles sold in five years since it's merged from bankruptcy in 2009.

Christine Romans live in New York with more on the G.M. recall crisis and the company's new CEO Mary Barra.

Good morning, Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

You know, there have been 30 G.M. recalls, so far, this year, we should expect more this summer. It is a full fledged recall crisis at G.M. There's one woman who has been on the job just one month before it all hit who has got to fix it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS (voice-over): Mary Barra has become the face of G.M.'s recall nightmare.

MARY BARRA, CEO, GENERAL MOTORS: My sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall, especially the families and friends who lost their lives or were injured. I am deeply sorry.

ROMANS: As the recalls mount, so does the pressure on Barra who has tried to stay ahead of the criticism. She appointed two outside legal firms to launch an internal investigation. She named a new safety chief, and she's restructured the company's engineering and quality departments.

But still, the question lingers, how could she not have known about the faulty ignition switches that started it all when others new years before?

BARRA: I was not aware that there was this issue until the recall was introduced on January 31st.

ROMANS: That was just days after she took over the top job at G.M.

BARRA: A bold new culture at our company.

ROMANS: Auto experts say that's not surprising given G.M. massive corporate structure.

MICHELLE KREBS, INDEPENDENT AUTO ANALYST: It's an enormous company. When outsiders come to work there, the first thing they say there just -- it's mind-boggling.

ROMANS: But Barra is no outsider, her 30-plus year rise at G.M. started with an internship. She moved through numerous engineering and manufacturing jobs and several executive level positions, then CEO.

That's why some senators found it hard to believe she wasn't aware, given that G.M. says its engineers detected the problem ten years ago.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D), CALIFORNIA: You're a really important person to this company. Something is very strange, that such a top employee would know nothing.

SEN. DAN COATS (R), INDIANA: But it is important that I think we understand what your role was during your 33 years, and more important than that, that the investigation point out just who knew what and when did they know it?

ROMANS (on camera): The results of gm's internal investigation are expected next month. Until then, the CEO, Mary Barra has been meeting privately with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., briefing them on the recalls. How she handle this is recall crisis will likely cement her G.M. legacy.

KREBS: If she turns this around, she could be a hero. The challenge for her right now is she's got to deal with this crisis. I think she's doing a lot of right things, insisting on recalls, getting this investigation done. She's hired outside consultants, but at the same time she's got to continue to run a car company.

ROMANS (voice-over): A car company whose sales have not slowed despite the steady drum beat of recall headlines.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: That drum beat continues again. Friday there was the 30th recall notice of the year, 11 just last week. As I've told you, Carol, She's getting high marks from our sources in Washington who say she's really briefing them on what's going on, but we are in the very early innings of this crisis for her, Carol.

COSTELLO: I know. I was going to ask you, how do you see this playing out for Mary Barra, but it's hard to say right now, right?

ROMANS: It's hard for her to say. Her manner has been very good, very communicative to the people in Washington, D.C. You know, she has got to show that she's not part of the problem, that she's a new safety culture, That there's a new safety culture at G.M.

I've been asking a lot of analysts and people who study G.M.'s books, is this going to hurt them? Sales are not down. In fact, traffic is up at the dealers. If they can even harness a little of that traffic to new car sales, they could actually make more money because of the crisis, people going into the dealers to have their older cars looked over.

So, it's too soon to say. Also, it's interesting, Bill Holstein who wrote a book "Why G.M. Matters", he told me people say, wow, that G.M. crisis is pretty bad for G.M., but I'm buying a Chevy.