Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Interview with Jacob Blake's Family Attorney Patrick Salvi Jr.; Interview with Temple University Student Government President Quinn Litsinger; California Residents Consider Relocating as 650 Wildfires Continue to Burn. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired August 26, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:31:47]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, local officials are now calling for additional National Guard troops in Kenosha, Wisconsin as what were largely peaceful protests over the police shooting of a black man turned deadly overnight.

Three people were shot, two of them killed as demonstrators who were out after curfew, and a group who officials have described as a militia or vigilantes clashed. This is not a clash with police -- armed vigilantes, according to some witnesses on the ground.

In Kenosha, it's now been three days sine Jacob Blake was shot multiple times in the back -- that's him there, and he was shot in front of those young sons you're seeing.

With me now is Patrick Salvi Jr., he's an attorney representing Jacob Blake's family. Mr. Salvi, thanks for taking the time this morning.

PATRICK SALVI JR., ATTORNEY FOR JACOB BLAKE'S FAMILY: Thanks for having me, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Let's begin on Jacob Blake's condition, shot seven times. How is he doing, is he going to make it?

SALVI: Well, we know that he was shot at least seven times. It actually may have been eight. He was in surgery pretty much all day yesterday at the time of our press conference, at around 3:00 Central. We announced that he was in surgery, and I was getting updates even after midnight.

So he did come out of surgery. He had to have additional hardware placed in his spine. And the extent of his spinal cord injury is still somewhat unknown. But when you hear that a bullet has shredded through at least a portion of his spinal cord, you are likely to have severe permanent injury, so he's likely to have at least partial if not complete paralysis below the level of that spinal cord injury.

But miraculously, given the point-blank range from which those shots were fired, it does appear he's going to survive, which is a -- which is a contrast to what's happened in some of the other travesties, George Floyd for instance.

And so we very (ph) much look forward to a time when Jacob is lucid and able to speak with us so that we can get his side of the story. We're still at a time when he has not been able to speak very much to anybody, particularly (INAUDIBLE) being on pain medication. He has talked to him mom face-to-face the one time, as we spoke of yesterday.

SCIUTTO: OK. Well, it's good to hear he's surviving, but those injuries severe. And our best goes to his family.

Let me for a moment go to the investigation here. Have police given you or the family any explanation as to why police might claim this was justified? Have they said police suspected he had a weapon on him in the car? What are they saying to you, if anything?

SALVI: Well, we have not heard anything directly. We've heard only the reporting that they've asked that people not rush to judgment. The stark contrast to that is that this officer seems to have completely rushed to judgment in the manner in which he handled this particular encounter.

Over the last couple of days -- so Monday and Tuesday -- our primary objective was to get Julia into their hospital -- there are various reasons why she was unable to, Jacob being in surgery, but then also COVID-related reasons -- and so we were trying to get her in to see Jacob.

[10:35:18]

And in doing so, we had to communicate with the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office, and we were unable to make contact. We did receive assistance from the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, but not Kenosha, even at a time when they had jurisdiction over Jacob. And so we have not had communication with them. We're going to continue to try to reach them so that we can figure (ph) out what facts they have, because we're entitled to those.

SCIUTTO: For sure. Do we know if Mr. Blake owned a weapon or was in possession of one?

SALVI: He did not. So in the vehicle, he did not have a weapon. I can't speak directly to what he owned, but what I can say is that his three children were in the car. That was on the forefront of his mind. That is the most important thing to him in his life, is his family and his children, the three boys that he had in the car, eight, five and three years old.

So to even imagine that Jacob was on his way to start an altercation with the police and that that's what he was doing with his three little boys in the car, as they were celebrating the 8-year-old, Israel's, birthday, that's just not the facts.

This was an unjustified shooting, that's obvious. Facts about what happened in the time leading up to the shooting are going to come out. We're going to be talking to witnesses, we'll be talking to Jacob. So those facts will come out. But irrespective of what those facts are, when he's walking around the

car, and for him to be from point-blank range shot in the back that many times, to essentially have a death sentence put on him? That is not justified. That is excessive force, and that's why we're going to be proceeding with a civil lawsuit.

SCIUTTO: Mr. Salvi, please pass on our thoughts to him and his family for a recovery from this, and we appreciate you joining us this morning.

SALVI: Than you, Jim. We certainly will.

SCIUTTO: Well, there are close to 4,000 students and staff at colleges and universities in dozens of states who have now tested positive for the coronavirus. Now, several are cracking down on students who break the coronavirus rules. We'll have an update coming right up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:42:06]

SCIUTTO: Several colleges across the U.S. are now disciplining students who break rules set up to stop the spread of the coronavirus. After campuses in more than 26 states are now reporting outbreaks.

The Ohio State University has suspended them, more than 200 students who broke social gathering guidelines, and the dean of students at Temple University is warning that those who violate guidelines on or off campus may face disciplinary action, some even getting kicked out of school.

Joining me now to talk about this is Quinn Litsinger. He is the president of the Temple University Student Government. Quinn, good morning, good to have you on.

QUINN LITSINGER, PRESIDENT, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY STUDENT GOVERNMENT: Morning, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Tell us your view of this as a student here, because we've seen a number of stories at a number of campuses where students are coming back and just flat-out ignoring the rules, having parties, no masks, et cetera. What do you say yourself as a fellow student, to students who do that?

LITSINGER: Well, so I think there are a few different stories to be told. On the one hand, if you're on campus, what's going on is students are predominantly -- and faculty, for that matter -- predominantly following CDC guidelines and university measures.

You get off campus -- and keeping in mind, Temple University isn't the average college town, right? This isn't our community, we are in the heart of North Philadelphia, which is a low-income, predominantly black neighborhood, which, as we know, is disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. And you take a community like that and you infuse within it thousands

of 18-to-22-year olds, who we know are currently socially starved. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a current college freshman, right? They've been robbed of their prom, their graduation, their senior summer.

And here they are, coming into what has been made up to be or marketed to be this time for them to socially flourish. And now, the expectation is for them to you know, stay in their residence halls as much as possible, physically distance and stuff like that. And it's just not realistic. And we've seen some schools like Penn State try to cast the blame onto students.

And there's a quote that I really love from a higher education professor at the University of North Carolina, Kevin McClure. And he said it's a little bit like a pilot taking off into a hurricane, and then blaming the grounds crew for not keeping the plane safe. I think we have to ask the question, who decided to take off in the hurricane?

SCIUTTO: I see. So you called on the university to close on-campus housing and to move to all-online classes. School is going ahead with in-person class. Are you saying that is simply an unrealistic way to go about this, that you've got to go online?

LITSINGER: Yes, that's the stance that Temple Student Government is currently taking. The university has put into place a lot of wonderful measures to ensure public health on campus. But at the end of the day, you can't police every decision that students make, that community members make. And sooner or later, you know, cases are going to go up that could have been avoided if we went all-online.

[10:45:00]

SCIUTTO: Yes. Do you think there's a balance, right? I mean, can you get -- just, listen, you're not kids any more, right? I mean, you're young but 18 to 22, you're adults. Do you think there is a balance that can be achieved where college students are asked to do their part, right? If they want to have in-person classes, they've got to be careful. They can't go to off-campus parties, et cetera. Can they be asked to do that? And if they are, are you saying it just won't happen?

LITSINGER: I think it's a fair thing to ask of college students, right? To make responsible choices and things like that. But it's rather predictable that they won't follow these guidelines, and that maybe they won't make the smartest decisions off-campus.

So when it comes to pointing fingers, I don't think pointing fingers at student behavior is necessarily the right route to go about it when, again, it's rather predictable that students would be acting in this way.

SCIUTTO: Understood. I guess I'm just asking in that -- we all have to make sacrifices, right? And if folks want -- and I understand why they do -- if they want on-campus experience and in-person classes, they're going to have to make sacrifices, right?

LITSINGER: For sure. And I don't mean in any way to defend any students that are going off-campus and partying right now, because that's you know horribly detrimental to our community, and that's the reason that these cases will spike up, right?

But we know that regardless of how many communications go out from the university and stuff like that, it's impossible to stop everyone from acting reckless. It's human nature. Temple has over 29,000 undergraduates, right? You can't control all of them.

SCIUTTO: No, I get it. I was a college student a long time ago. Quinn Litsinger, listen, we wish you the best of luck. We know it's real tough to lose a lot of these experiences when you're in college.

LITSINGER: Thank you so much, Jim.

SCIUTTO: All right, well, California wildfires have scorched an area of land larger than the state of Delaware in just over one week, and many families are wondering if these annual battles with wildfires are the state's new normal. It's a real question. We'll have more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:26]

SCIUTTO: Some 650 wildfires have now burned more than a million acres of land across California in just over one week. Officials are now requesting help from the National Guard as the fires leave at least seven people dead, destroy more than 1,400 homes -- 1,400, think of all those families and businesses, other structures as well.

Now, many families are wondering if their future might need to lie in another state. CNN's Dan Simon joins me now from Napa Valley.

Dan, what toll are these fires taking on local homeowners? Are they concerned that they can't rebuild?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well hi, Jim. Well first of all, as far as this fire is concerned, crews are continuing to make some good progress thanks to favorable weather conditions. But you still have tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated. And for a lot of these folks, this is becoming something of an annual nightmare. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON (voice-over): The grapes are plump as harvesting is about to begin in California's Wine Country. But this annual late summer tradition is now accompanied by a more ominous one.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is five years straight we've had terrible fires, and it's a real scary thing. This is new new normal.

SIMON: So you evacuated in 2017?

DAVID STALNAKER, RESIDENT OF NAPA COUNTY: A couple of times.

SIMON: Two thousand eighteen?

D. STALNAKER: Two thousand eighteen once, and I think we did it once in 2016. And then this year.

SIMON (voice-over): Five evacuations in four years for David and Marianne Stalnaker. This time, their good luck had run out.

MARIANNE STALNAKER, RESIDENT OF NAPA COUNTY: We've been together for 43 years, everything we built together is gone.

SIMON (voice-over): Their home in Napa County, along with dozens of others in the Berryessa Highlands neighborhoods has been reduced to piles of rubble.

M. STALNAKER: Everybody was very fire wise, safe here. But it just roared through the canyons. There's nothing you can do about it. It's just sad. It's reality, I guess.

SIMON (voice-over): The reality is marked by these troubling statistics: Five of California's most destructive wildfires in history, taking place here in Wine Country in just the past few years, more than 10,000 structures destroyed.

JILLIAN NOLAN, RESIDENT OF NAPA COUNTY: I just started hysterically crying.

SIMON (voice-over): Jillian and Cassidy Nolan, along with their four children, had just moved into their new home in June. Cassidy is a former Marine who had done two deployments in Afghanistan.

CASSIDY NOLAN, RESIDENT OF NAPA COUNTY: The feeling is the same, you know? There's despair, there's sadness, there's sorrow, there's destruction.

SIMON (voice-over): More destruction in fact than any family should have to endure. In 2017, Jillian says her mother lost her Napa home to the devastating Atlas Fire. A year later, she says her sister lost her home to the tragic Camp Fire that ravaged the town of Paradise.

J. NOLAN: Bad luck with fire. We have no idea really what comes next.

SIMON (voice-over): Given all the tragedies and the potential for more fires, they're not certain if they want to say in California.

The Stalnakers, weighing their options as well as they look for lost treasures.

M. STALNAKER: We just poured so much money into this home in the last few years. That's what we've been doing since we retired, is re -- you know, we had it painted, you know, we've just redone the whole thing, redone the rooms. All for naught.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SIMON: Well, experts say because of global warming coupled with an abundance of dry fuel -- whether that's from a drought or from wildfire suppression, they say these wildfires, these devastating wildfires are really the new normal here in California. And of course, Jim, we've talked to so many of these wildfire victims, and just all their stories are heartbreaking -- Jim.

[10:55:16]

SCIUTTO: So much loss for those families. Dan, thanks for bringing us those stories. Our hearts go out to them, they really do.

And thanks to you for joining us today. I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with Kate Bolduan will start right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:00]