Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Florida Becomes 8th State to Enact Anti-Trans Sports Ban This Year; Still No Motive in Deadly Shooting at CA Fire Station; Kids 12- and 14-Years-Old Fire on Deputies; Clock Ticks for Israeli Opposition to Form a Government and Oust Prime Minister. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 02, 2021 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

VERONICA IVY, TRANSGENDER RIGHTS ACTIVIST: They weren't exactly vocal at the disparity between the NCAA women's basketball training facilities compared to the men. This I think is really a proxy war for them having lost the bathroom bill fight, so it's just an attempt to control trans people's bodies to try to legislate us out of public society.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: And as an activist, what does it mean to you that this has now become the new stage, the new chapter of the culture war, trans rights?

IVY: I predicted this some years ago, sadly, because I saw that things with like the way that North Carolina's HB2 went and the backlash that it received, that the right wing wasn't going to win the bathroom war and we've seen court decision at the federal level, the district court level and even the Supreme Court with the 2020 Bostock decision that decided that protections against sex discrimination includes transgender identities. So, it is illegal to discriminate against trans people on the basis of being trans and the same reasoning will apply to Title 9.

So all of these laws will fall immediately to judicial review. And I have to think that these people are smart enough to know this. And if that's the case, then they're just engaging in cruelty for cruelty's sake. Because we're talking about children here and the right to play and the right to play with their friends on their grade-school school teams. So, play is such a fundamentally important aspect of our human development that to take that away from children is beyond reprehensible.

BLACKWELL: The governor during this presentation, this signing here, at the event, he brought up -- actually first streamed a video of a trans athlete winning a race and then brought up a competitor who talked about the frustrations of losing to a trans athlete. And there are some people who might be concerned or confused. What do you say to people who question that competition?

IVY: Yes, so let me say that fairness means inclusion. So full inclusion is a prerequisite for fairness. And we have to just get over the fact that trans girls are really girls and trans women are really women. And so framing this as an issue of boys play boys-sport and girls play girl-sport is a miss framing of the issue.

We're talking about trans gender girls and cisgender girls. Right, so we are talking about girls playing on girl sports.

So for example, let's talk about the NCAA because this policy applies to college sports as well. The NCAA has had a trans inclusion policy for over ten years. And they have had millions of athletes and in all of that time, there has been a single Division II national champion, and that's it. And that's Division II. It's not even Division I.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

IVY: So, this idea that we're going to see this flood of takeover of trans women and trans girls winning sport is nonsense. And the case that you're talking about, the Connecticut plaintiff beat the very trans girls that she's complaining about a couple weeks later.

So, it's --

BLACKWELL: Yes.

IVY: -- it seems like they may be OK with trans people as long as we lose, but if we win, then suddenly it's not OK. That's just not how fairness works.

BLACKWELL: Speaking of winning. You mentioned earlier court cases. You mentioned the Supreme Court in 2020, but this is a new Supreme Court. You've got a 6-3 conservative bench. Are you confident that if these cases get to the Supreme Court again that there will be similar rulings, similar findings?

IVY: Well, the Bostock decision is extremely important in setting precedent and the reasoning behind treating transgender identity as already included under protections against sex discrimination. So this same reasoning is going to apply to Title 9. The NCAA opposes this legislation. The NCAA encouraging trans inclusion.

[15:35:00]

The federal government and the EEOC have guidelines that trans people are to be respected as the gender that we are, that we express. So I am fully confident whatever the court competition, that these sorts of laws like out of Florida are just cruel failed attempts at a culture war.

BLACKWELL: All right, Veronica Ivy, thanks so much for spending time with us.

IVY: Thanks.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Victor, still ahead, we're going to speak to the sheriff whose deputies got into a shootout with a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF MIKE CHITWOOD, VOLUSIA COUNTY, FLORIDA: Where have we gone wrong that 12-year-old and 14-year-old think it's OK to take on law enforcement?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:40:00]

CAMEROTA: We now know the name of the L.A. County firefighter who was killed in California. This is a horrible story. It was the second workplace shooting in less than a week. Torey Carlin, a career firefighter with more than 20 years under his belt was shot and killed yesterday by a coworker inside a fire station 30 miles north of Los Angeles. A fire captain was shot and is in critical but stable condition. Authorities say the shooter set his own home on fire then took his own life.

Josh Campbell, CNN national security correspondent tells us what's happening. What do we know about this case -- Josh?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Authorities still waiting to learn the motive here, but they say this appears to be an incident, of workplace violence, as you mentioned. Another one in California. We were obviously just covering the incident up there in San Jose. Authorities say yesterday after 10:00 a.m., they received calls of shots fired at this fire station. They arrived and located one firefighter who was shot and killed. Another one was taken to the hospital.

Authorities say that the perpetrator was also a firefighter. Again, they're treating this as a workplace incident. I can tell you I was there on the scene yesterday, and we were wondering why authorities were keeping us back so far, why they had such a wide perimeter.

We then learned that they had a second scene they were trying to work at the same time at that residence. Authorities say that they believe that after the shooting, the perpetrator went to his house, barricaded himself, killed himself. Again authorities tell us that at this hour they are still working to determine that motive.

BLACKWELL: Josh, you also have new surveillance video from last week's deadly rail yard mass shooting in Northern California. Tell us about it.

CAMPBELL: Yes, we'll show you this video. This was just released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department that shows officers arriving on the scene from multiple jurisdictions. They quickly fused together in what is called a contact team and tried to make entry.

At one point here you see them come across an employee. They try to back him out so that they can make entry. As they progressed in, at this point they didn't hear any shots to help them kind of vector towards the location of that shooter, but that quickly changed. And I want to warn our viewers that what you're about to see is

graphic. This was the end of that shooting as shots rang out. This is the suspect killing himself. Watch what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Third floor. Shots fired third floor.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Conference room?

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Yes, he's in here.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: All the way.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Watch his hand. Watch his hand.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Be careful.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Watch his hands. Watch his hands.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Hold that stairwell.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Stairwell.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Hold that stairwell.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Top side's clear.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: OK. You hold this. You hold this.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: I see the gun in his hand right there.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: OK. Stand by. Stand by.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Let's just clear it out.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Hold this, hold this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Now, after authorities determined there that was, indeed, the shooter who had died by suicide, they worked to render aid to some of the other victims. Sadly, we're learning that nine people died in that mass shooting. But this chilling video just really gives you a sense of the danger of this profession of law enforcement. We see that real-time heroism at play there, these officers rushing into the scene.

And finally you know in these mass shootings, authorities always tell the public to run, hide, fight in that order. But of course with law enforcement officers, their job is to fight. And as we saw in that video, they rushed toward the sound of gunfire. Just truly chilling heroic video there.

CAMEROTA: Agreed. The stress that they have to deal with -- with this spate of mass shootings right now in this country is just unimaginable.

CAMPBELL: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: And that body cam video captures it. Josh, thank you very much.

CAMPBELL: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: Now to this story. On Tuesday, a 12-year-old and a 14-year- old ran away from their juvenile detention home, then broke into a house, got their hands on assault-style guns and then opened fire on sheriff's deputies. Deputies returned fire, hitting the 14-year-old, who is now hospitalized. Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood lashed out lashed out at their willingness to at the shoot deputies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHITWOOD: Where have we gone wrong that 12-year-old and 14-year-old think it's OK to take on law enforcement?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, we are joined now on the phone by that Sheriff Chitwood of Volusia County, Florida. Sheriff, thank you so much for being with us. When you realized and your deputies realized that you were in a gun battle -- they were in a gun battle with a 12- and 14-year-old, what were you thinking?

CHITWOOD (via phone): I was heading out to the scene and I heard everything over the radio. And I was 40 miles away. I knew I was not going to get there in time. And all I kept -- was going through my mind is, what are these deputies thinking that they have to return fire on a 12- and 14-year-old? They're moms and dads. I know some of them their kids are that same age. And you know, thank god, nobody was killed. I don't know what the residual effects are going to be on some of these deputies.

CAMEROTA: I can only imagine. I mean, they had to shoot that 14-year- old girl, I mean, according to your deputies, because she was firing at them and came out with a gun. Do you know her condition right now?

[15:45:00]

CHITWOOD: She was air lifted down to Arnold Palmer in Orlando where she is in critical but stable condition. I think what the viewers need to understand is this incident begins at 5:00 at night when they walk off campus. And a call is put out because the 12-year-old is insulin dependent and it had been four hours since he had his last shot.

So, we're in the mode of searching for these two, hoping that we catch the 12-year-old in time before he has a medical episode or worse. And every time we encounter them, they run from us. And then eventually we're led to the residence where there's a bike trail -- a very popular bike trail that runs behind a home -- and they tell us they saw a young male and young female break into a home, and they heard glass shattering. And that's when the deputies get there. And I don't know why they didn't enter. I'm glad they didn't enter.

They stood outside, they gathered information, they got ahold of the homeowner and he said there were three firearms in there, one of which was an AR-15 or AK-47 and that there were over two hundred rounds of ammunition in the house. So they set up a perimeter. And during the course of them trying to make contact with the 12-year-old and 14- year-old, the radio transmissions talk about shots fired.

The female has a long gun pointed toward alpha 40, one of the units, they are shooting out the rear of the house. They just made a verbal threat to kill LEO. It looks like the female is loading another firearm. And these are just some of the excerpts from the transmission. Shots fired again. Juvenile male is shooting at it this time.

And then when we question him when it's all over, he tells investigators that the female made a statement that, I'm going to roll this down like GTA, Grand Theft Auto. And that she started firing multiple times at deputies who were outside the residence. They knew it was law enforcement, he said, and they were shooting to cause harm to law enforcement. This is the statement of the 12-year-old.

CAMEROTA: Is there bodycam video of this episode?

CHITWOOD: There is. Unfortunately, it's dark, so what we're doing is we're releasing so you can hear the audio portion and the air WARN coverage. We'll be releasing that video in probably in about another 15 minutes. It's long video because this went on for hours. They were on scene for probably an hour and 45 minutes while they were being shot at before the ending happened, before 9:00 at night.

And they took great -- I cannot tell you how proud I am of their bravery. They followed our de-escalation policy, time, distance and cover. The only cover they had were trees because this was a very big property, a lot of land. At one point in time, they got up close to the property and threw a cell phone in to try to make contact with them. And clearly, this wasn't going to happen.

And the homeowner, they destroyed his house. They took a baseball bat and destroyed the inside of that home. The only thing we could surmise from that is there --the homeowner had been awarded an award for life saving from the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, which is just south of us. And that was prominently displayed in his den. I think they figured they broke into a cop's home and they just destroyed the inside of this guy's house. I mean, it's flooded. I mean there's tens of thousands of dollars' worth of damage, on top of firing at law enforcement.

CAMEROTA: Sheriff, what a story. What an incredible story. Obviously, we will listen to that audio as soon as you release it and we will monitor the condition of that 14-year-old. I mean, as you say, no deputy should ever have to encounter that. And -- well, none of us should have to report on this. Sheriff Chitwood, thank you very much for all the information.

CHITWOOD: Thank you. And we're praying for the firefighter in California as well. That's just a horrible, horrible story.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. Thank you very much for your time -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: Up next, we're live in Jerusalem as the clock winds down on Prime Minister Netanyahu's time in power. Potentially, details on what happens when a deadline hits in little more than an hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:50:00]

BLACKWELL: We are just a little more than an hour from a potential historic shift in Israeli politics. Opposition parties have until midnight local time, that's 5:00 P.M. Eastern, to form a new government that could bring an end to Benjamin Netanyahu's 12 year run as Prime Minister.

CAMEROTA: CNN Hadas Gold is live in Jerusalem for us. Hadas, is this possibly going to happen, Netanyahu could be out?

HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's hard to say. We do have about an hour to go to see whether these opposition parties manage to get these coalition agreements together and present it to the Israeli president and say they have managed to get this government together. We are hearing updates throughout the night about these different agreements being signed. We do have a bit of history being made.

For the first time an Arab-Israeli party, the United Arab List, has said that it will sign on, it has signed on to the coalition. We don't know exactly what's in their coalition agreement, but it's historic moment, the first time that an Arab-Israeli party is signing to be part of a government coalition.

It also goes to show you how broad of a government, that they're calling it a unity government this would be, should they manage to get sworn in. You'll have everybody from left-leaning Meretz Party through the center to the right-wing, Naftali Bennett Yamina Party and then also an Arab-Israeli party and yet we still don't know if they will actually pull this off.

They have just over an hour to go, and even if they do manage to sign these agreements and present the coalition to the Israeli president, they still have another hurdle. They must present this government to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament for a vote of confidence.

[15: 55:00]

That will be done in seven days or less but that does give Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies time to potentially try to get a few defectors and if he gets just a handful of defectors that could potentially cause this entire coalition to crumble.

So you can never say never in Israeli politics, things can change quickly, and you can you never write off Benjamin Netanyahu. He's the ultimate political survivor here. So we now just wait until midnight and see what happens -- Alisyn. BLACKWELL: All right, a crucial hour and five minutes now. Hadas Gold for us in Jerusalem, thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, still ahead, the White House is responding to the latest Russian cyberattack against the U.S. How Biden plans to address it with Putin, next on "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END