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Family Waits for Shooting Video in North Carolina; Unarmed Man Shot 10 Times in Virginia; India Breaks COVID Record; U.S. Sends Help to India; Supreme Court Takes up Second Amendment Case. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired April 26, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:32:24]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The family of Andrew Brown Jr., a black man shot and killed by deputies in North Carolina last week, will meet with the Pasquotank County attorney this morning.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: They're, obviously, hoping that they can finally watch the body camera footage of his killing that has not been released to the public so far. The county's sheriff says he does expect to get confirmation today to file a court motion to have the footage made public.

Our Natasha Chen joins us in Elizabeth City.

Natasha, obviously the family's been waiting a long time, better part of a week, to be able to see it. And there they need -- the D.A. says they need a court order to release to it the public. Does it look like that will happen publicly?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's a great question, Poppy. That's what everyone is waiting to finds out.

But, first, it's more likely that the family may get to view this video privately today during their meeting at 11:30. So there are a number of people outside the building right now, outside the public safety building here, here gathered to support the family. And they've been walking around, marching peacefully, saying "no justice, no peace." And they're -- they've actually brought out their folding chairs. So they're prepared that this could take a while.

As far as the court filings to have the video released publicly, you're going to see that probably coming from several entities. You mentioned the sheriff. The Elizabeth City Council also is filing a motion. And a coalition of news organizations, including CNN, are also formally filing to petition for the release of that video.

You mentioned here in North Carolina it does require a court order and the mayor of Elizabeth City, Bettie Parker, was discussing that on "NEW DAY" this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BETTIE PARKER, ELIZABETH CITY, NORTH CAROLINA: Personally, I think we, after 24 to 48 hours, that the investigation should be, you know, at a point that they can share more with the public, because the longer that there is no transparency or accountability, the public gets anxious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHEN: She and some others have talked about wanting to change this law. Right now, there is a senate bill in the state legislature addressing this. Unclear how far that will go.

Right now seven sheriff's deputies are on administrative leave. They were the ones involved in Wednesday's event. And two more sheriff's deputies have resigned. A third has retired at this point. And so a lot of tension here in the community.

And we are also hearing from the chairman of the county commission calling for patience in the community, saying that ignoring North Carolina law is irresponsible.

[09:35:01]

Poppy and Jim.

HARLOW: Natasha, thank you very much for that reporting.

Well, in Virginia, a man is fighting for his life this morning after being shot ten times by a sheriff deputy just an hour after that same deputy gave him a ride home.

BERMAN: Shot ten times. Attorneys for Isaiah Brown say a communication failure led to the shooting after the deputy returned to respond to a 911 call placed by Brown. State officials say the deputy mistook the cellphone Brown was holding for a gun and then fired ten times.

Here is part of the deputy's body cam video. Like all of these videos, it's disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drop the gun!

He's got a gun to his head.

Drop the gun now! Stop walking towards me! Stop walking towards me! Stop! Stop!

(gunfire)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Well, it wasn't a gun. It was a cell phone.

CNN's Brynn Gingras has been following this story. Brynn, do officials have an explanation for why he made this decision?

And what is the status this officer now.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, not quite yet, Jim. Of course this is being now investigated by a special state prosecutor there in Virginia. And the deputy that fired all of those shots at Brown, he's on administrative leave right now.

Now, you just showed you viewers the body cam video. There was also a 911 call with dispatchers that was released to the public. And I want to kind of go through that with you because it gives a little bit more insight into possibly what happened and gives a little bit more answers, maybe.

Essentially, the deputy was arriving for a domestic disturbance call. And in that 911 call with dispatchers, Brown threatens to kill his brother in -- when talking with the dispatcher. And the dispatcher asks, do you have a gun? And Brown answers, yes. And then the dispatcher asks, well, is the gun on you, and the dispatch -- and Brown essentially says no. So he's unarmed at this point according to this 911 call.

And then Brown walks out into the street and you can actually hear the dispatcher tell Brown, put your hands up, put your hands up, as you hear the sirens of that deputy arriving. And that's where this audio picks up.

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DISPATCHER: Isaiah, are you holding your hands up?

OFFICER: Show me your hands!

DISPATCHER: Put your hands up.

OFFICER: Show me your hands now! Show me your hands! Group the gun! Drop the gun now! (INAUDIBLE). (INAUDIBLE). Stop! Stop!

(GUNSHOTS)

OFFICER: Show me your hands! Show me your hands! Drop the gun! Drop the gun!.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRAS: Yes, just as disturbing to hear as it is to see.

Now, according to the Brown family attorney, as you guys said, the medical report shows that he was shot ten times. The deputy did perform CPR after firing those shots. But we now know that Isaiah Brown is in the hospital in serious condition fighting for his life, though with non-life threatening injuries according to the latest report.

But the Brown family attorney essentially says, guys, that this could have been completely avoided, that there was really this big breakdown in communication between the dispatcher and that deputy who was arriving there on the scene. At what point did they actually have to go so far to fire these shots?

In a statement I want to read part of it to you. The lawyer says, the deputy in question made multiple basic policing errors and violated established protocols. The deputy was situated nearly 50 feet from Isaiah, was never threatened and should have never discharged his weapon.

Of course, these are the questions that they want answers to. Amid this huge conversation across the country as to why police take the actions that they are doing, particularly in communities of color against unarmed black men at this point, guys.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, it was more than an issue of communication. He flat out mistook one of these for a gun, right? Second time we've seen that on police video in recent times.

Brynn Gingras, thanks very much.

HARLOW: Yes.

Thank you, Brynn.

Well, hospitals across India are in the middle of a devastating situation. Severe oxygen shortages as this country breaks the daily global COVID record for the fifth straight day.

Up next, how the Biden administration says it's going to help the country with the surge and what they are not doing right now.

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[09:43:53]

SCIUTTO: Right now, India is fighting another vicious wave of coronavirus that is killing thousands of people in that country every day. The second wave, which began in March, has escalated now rapidly. Look at that jump there on the graph. The south Asian nation recorded more than a million new cases in the span of just three days.

HARLOW: And for the past two weeks, medical facilities across India have been running out of oxygen, running outs of ICU beds. Patients have been left to die at home or outside of hospitals just waiting to get in.

Now, international efforts to tackle this crisis are ramping up. But is it too late?

Our senior international correspondent Ivan Watson joins us now.

It is -- it is devastating and it's just so, you know, you sit in a country like the United States, where anyone can get a vaccine who wants one this morning, and look what's happening in India.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I mean the vaccine -- the vaccination process had begun there. Health care workers, for example, getting first priority. But that hasn't been enough to help a country that is really stricken by the ferocity of the pandemic in this second wave, where everybody I've spoken to in India is dealing with loved ones who are sick and struggling to find supplies, like oxygen, or an ICU bed for their loved ones.

[09:45:16]

Including a producer working for CNN, who lost an uncle in the last 48 hours and was trying to find a hospital bed for that relative.

I just got off the phone with a Princeton University epidemiologist in New Delhi who told me that he had lost cousins and couldn't find oxygen for a 42-year-old colleague of his there. And also telling us that the numbers of the mortality right now where you're having close to 3,000 deaths a day, that he estimates that they're much lower, what is being reported, than in actuality. We're hearing anecdotally about crematoriums working around the clock with the bodies that are burned in the traditional ceremony in India, that they just can't keep up with the sheer number of people that are succumbing to the disease with people dying while gasping for breath outside of hospitals because there is no oxygen to provide for them and no beds for them either.

Take a listen to what one individual in New Delhi had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

K.K. SHARMA, NEW DELHI RESIDENT (through translator): My father is 70 years old. Last night I purchased an oxygen cylinder on the black market and it's already empty. Oxygen cylinders aren't even available on the black market now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Now, the government has announced plans to create more than 500 oxygen-generating plants around the country. We'll see how fast they can ramp that up. The defense -- top defense official has announced that they're calling up retired medical personnel from the military, who have retired within the last two years, to deploy them to help with the crisis. One of the bottlenecks seems to be the transporting of oxygen with health officials insisting that there is enough there, but we're hearing hospitals, as they issue their desperate tweets online, saying that their -- their deliveries of oxygen tanks are being held up at points -- at checkpoints and so on.

It is a really, really desperate situation right now. The Biden administration is promising and pledging assistance to help them through this crisis.

HARLOW: They could send the AstraZeneca vaccine that we have in this country to India as well. That's a key decision the administration's going to need to make, that could save a lot of lives.

Ivan, thank you very much.

SCIUTTO: Let's turn now to the White House. CNN's Jeremy Diamond is there.

So, Jeremy, the Biden administration, they are vowing to send additional support, including kind of the raw materials of the vaccine so India can make it.

By the way, India gave the U.S. a lot of PPE supplies and so on early on in the pandemic.

How far is the Biden administration willing to go?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jim. And the national security adviser to the president, Jake Sullivan, he spoke with his counterpart in India just over the weekend and he pledged several different means of support.

Let me read you a part of the statement reading out that call. It says the United States has identified supplies of therapeutics, rapid diagnostic kits, ventilators and personal protective equipment that will immediately be made available for India. The United States is also pursuing options to provide oxygen generation and related supplies on India -- on an urgent basis, just as India sent assistance to the United States as our hospitals were strained early in the pandemic. The United States is determined to help India in its time of need.

And U.S. officials describing this in terms of solidarity. The U.S. and India are the two countries with the highest numbers of total confirmed coronavirus cases. And so you're going to see not only the supplies that I just mentioned, but also raw materials being provided to Indian manufacturers of its COVID vaccine, U.S. investment as well in the main manufacturer of vaccines in India in terms of financial investments, as well as CDC, public health teams, that will be headed to India to advise the Indian government on its response to the coronavirus.

But in all of this, what you are not seeing, which is something that Poppy just mentioned, is you're not seeing the U.S. sending doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine over to India. The U.S. is currently sitting on a stockpile of tens of millions of those doses. We have only lent so far about 4 million doses to our neighbors, Mexico and Canada. But none of the other doses have been sent to any other countries.

And officials tell us that that is something that is indeed being discussed at the White House. But as of yet, they are not sending those doses abroad. And we will just have to wait and see whether they decide to go that extra step in providing what could be really critical assistance to India in its time of need.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

As the doctor told us earlier this hour, it's a global pandemic, right? You know, you don't end it until you get global herd immunity.

Jeremy Diamond, thanks very much.

And we'll be right back.

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[09:54:27]

SCIUTTO: Breaking news just in to CNN.

The Supreme Court has done something it has not done for years, really, which is agreed to take up a major Second Amendment case.

HARLOW: Our justice correspondent Jessica Schneider joins us.

Jess, I believe, is this the first significant Second Amendment case they've taken up since the Heller decision?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It is. There was one that accompanied that, but really this is the first major case the Supreme Court will take up concerning the Second Amendment in just about a decade here.

And, of course, you know, this is -- this announcement, it comes after a slew of mass shootings where gun rights in our country are -- they're being questioned.

[09:55:01]

So this is a case out of New York and it's a law that governs licenses to carry concealed handguns in public. So this law in New York, it requires residents to show what they call an actual and articular need to actually carry the concealed guns. You know, it's a very high bar. Two of the men who were denied licenses, they fought this. The lower court said that New York could put this restriction in place but now it will go all the way up to the Supreme Court.

So this is interesting because we've seen several justices in recent years speaking out about how the Supreme Court should be taking up a Second Amendment case. We -- we've heard from Justice Clarence Thomas. He wrote that he believes the Second Amendment has become a disfavored right. And supporters of gun rights, in addition to the conservative justices here, of course the newest justice, also a conservative, Amy Coney Barrett, she wrote a majority opinion when she was on the Seventh Circuit that talked about the historical right to bear arms. So many are viewing that as Amy Coney Barrett having this broad view of the Second Amendment.

But crucially, guys, the lower court did uphold this New York state law that made it difficult to get this license to carry concealed weapons in public. We'll see when it comes down to the Supreme Court how they view the Second Amendment now since, Poppy, as you mentioned, it has been just about a decade since they've ruled on the Second Amendment.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Right.

SCHNEIDER: But we won't hear this case until the start of next term in October. So we will see, guys.

SCIUTTO: And, by the way, these justices were vetted and picked by a Republican president and his supporters to be liberal on the Second Amendment issue. The courts -- you know, the makeup of the court makes a difference here.

SCHNEIDER: It does, 6-3 conservative, guys.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Jessica, thank you.

SCHNEIDER: Thanks.

HARLOW: We'll be right back.

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