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3 Officers, 2 Paramedics Indicted in Elijah McClain's Death; California Classroom Demonstrates the Virulence of Delta Variant; Texas Organization Resettles 500 Plus Afghan Refugees and Families; Louisiana Residents Face Gas Shortages. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 01, 2021 - 15:30   ET

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

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ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: A Colorado grand jury has indicted three Aurora police officers and two paramedics for the 2019 death of 23- year-old Elijah McClain. The state's Attorney General announced the charges at news conference earlier today.

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PHIL WEISER (D) COLORADO STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: -- for their alleged conduct on the night of August 24th, 2019, that resulted in the death of Mr. McClain. Each of the five defendants face one count of manslaughter and one count of criminally negligent homicide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: McClain died three days after he was aggressively detained by police, put in a choke hold and injected with a powerful sedative by paramedics. CNN's Nick Watt joins me now. So, Nick, Elijah McClain died almost two years ago, so why have the charges taken so long?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, that is just one of the shocking and stunning things about this case. The first is that Elijah McClain was a mild mannered 23-year-old kid walking back from the convenient store listening to some music with some ice tea when he was stopped by those three officers.

A driver, a passing motorist had called 911 saying that McClain's wearing a ski mask and acting strangely. And in the initial police report they said that he quote, resisted contact.

Now the second stunning thing is that two paramedics are charged here along with the three officers and that is because as you mentioned McClain was injected with ketamine. He then had a heart attack on the way to the hospital and died three days later.

And the other stunning thing as you mentioned just how long this has taken. The reason for that, well, initially, the D.A. didn't charge any of those three officers because the autopsy came back inconclusive. His argument, well, how can I charge anyone when we don't exactly know how McClain died. Then, the killing of George Floyd reignited interest in McClain's case and that is how we ended up here today. The Colorado Governor asked the Attorney General to look into it and that wound up with these indictments handed down by the grand jury -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: And so, Nick, what has the family's response been to these indictments?

WATT: Well, McClain's mother said she cried. His father said this, nothing will bring back my son but I'm thankful that his killers will finally be held accountable.

Now McClain's loved ones called him a beautiful soul. He played the violin. He loved animals. He was a vegetarian. He was a massage therapist. And among his last words as he was being held down by officers are these. I'm going to read them to you now.

I was just going home. I'm an introvert and I'm different. I'm just different. That's all. He also said, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Please, stop -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Oh, yes, we've heard those words too many times. Nick Watt, thank you.

Well, a new report details how easily COVID-19 spread in one classroom. An unvaccinated teacher took off her mask and infected more than half her students.

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CAMEROTA: In Florida, two school districts are shutting down for several days just weeks after they started the new school year. The Gulf and Taylor County Districts will be close through Labor Day because of rising COVID-19 cases.

CNN's Leyla Santiago is in Florida and so Leyla, Governor Ron DeSantis is, you know, punishing schools that have mask mandates. So, would he rather schools be shut down and kids at home than kids wear masks in the classroom?

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, the Governor has made it clear he wants schools to remain open. I have reached out to his office about this. We're still waiting to hear back.

But let's talk about what exactly led up to this. You mentioned it, it is Gulf County and Taylor County closing down for several days. Both of those in the northwestern part of Florida.

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And let's start with Gulf. Gulf County is saying, look, we have a spike in cases and as a result they are going to kind of pause for a minute. Take advantage of the holiday weekend and keep kids home hoping that that helps for a limited time anyway in the spread. But also, they are dealing with staffing shortages as a result of a lot of quarantines. Something that Taylor County actually echoed saying it's not a matter of an increase in cases for Taylor County according to the superintendent. Rather it's they have so many people on quarantine that they don't have the resources right now to continue on the way they are.

The district saying that 10 percent of the staff is out and they don't have enough substitutes which can be a real big obstacle and challenge in these rural areas like Taylor County as well as Gulf County.

Now again, they said that they are going to take a pause. They will reopen or that's the plan as of right now, next week. But they need to find way to sort of reset, given the fact the Governor wants to keep the schools open, doesn't want any mask mandates but they need to proceed with limited and strained resources.

One other quick note, I should mention, Alisyn, both of these school districts do not have a mask mandate in place.

CAMEROTA: I mean it sounds like schools maybe saying these are mutually exclusive. You can't have mask mandate and keep schools open based upon their experience but we'll see what happens. Leyla, thank you very much for the reporting.

Now to this school story. New details about a small Catholic school in Marin County, California and how one unvaccinated teacher managed to pass the virus to at least 12 of her 24 students.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen joins me with more. So, Elizabeth, the story is as I understand it, that she took off her mask to read aloud to her class and that's how all those kids got infected.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. That's how they think it happened, Alisyn. Because that's apparently the time when she wasn't masked and she was with her students.

This teacher was not vaccinated. This teacher had some symptoms but attributed them to allergies and she came into work and took her mask off while she read to her students. Let's take a look at what happened in this classroom.

So, these students were too young to be vaccinated. On occasion, she would take off her mask to read to them. There were 24 students. They tested 22 of them, 12 out of the 22 tested positive and then 14 additional students and family members tested positive.

And when you see this seating chart, that I think will help explain how it happened. These yellow seats, those are the children who ended up testing positive and you can see that most of them were towards the front of the classroom. It's very simple. You read, droplets escape as you're speaking and you can infect other people.

Now my CNN colleague Maggie Fox spoke with a father of a student in this classroom and he said this is a lovely young woman. The teacher is a lovely young woman but he's asking why wasn't she required to be vaccinated? Why wasn't she wearing a mask all the time? These are questions that teachers and students are asking in various parts of the country where there are outbreaks -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Just an incredible and incredible visually also to see how easily that spread. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you.

Well, thousands of Afghan refugees left their lives behind in order to get to safety. Now that they are out of Kabul, now what? What's next for them? How will they get food and jobs and housing? All of that next.

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CAMEROTA: Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees are now on U.S. soil. Many arrived with just the clothes on their back. Refugee Services of Texas is one agency helping to resettle Afghan refugees across that state. So far, the organization has helped 77 Afghans with Special Immigrant Visas and their families.

The CEO of Refugee Services of Texas, Russell Smith, joins me now. Russell, thanks so much for being here. Just explain how this works for the 77 Afghans that you've resettled in Texas, how do they get housing and food and jobs?

RUSSELL SMITH, CEO, REFUGEE SERVICES OF TEXAS: Yes, thank you for having me. So, the Afghans that are coming are under a program called the Special Immigrant Visa Program, which was started about a dozen years ago to help Iraqis and Afghans who have helped the U.S. overseas.

And so, it works a lot like the resettlement activities we do are with refugees from other places. So, what happens is that we'll get some notice that they are arriving. You know typically, we get a couple of weeks' notice. But in this current situation, we're getting, you know, four hours, eight hours' notice, maybe a day.

But we kind of typically we'll assemble a welcome team, which is a group of volunteers who set up an apartment for them, kind of buy all the essentials that they need. They'll pick them up at the airport.

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They bring them to their apartment where they get settled in. And then our staff come out and, you know, kind of greet them the next day and get started on working with them to kind of apply for social security, to get their kids enrolled in school, you know, to start providing services like ESL classes if needed, employment services, whatever they need to kind of integrate into their new home.

CAMEROTA: And how hard is it, number one, for them to find jobs and to assimilate into Texas culture? And I know that you have said, you've called your state of Texas, quote, one of the friendliest, most accommodating places on earth. And I want to believe that.

But of course, we're in -- I mean, but we see in all sorts of other stories how we're in the most vitriolic political climate of our lifetimes, and so are you getting resistance from some corners of Texas about resettling Afghans?

SMITH: Not that I have seen. I'm a native Texan so I have to say nice things about my state. It's a great place. There is a lot of great people here. You know, there are some misunderstandings about the people that we work with, about refugees, about these Special Immigrant Visas. But you know typically, when people learn -- these are the individuals that helped the U.S. forces overseas and that we made a promise to that we would make sure that they and their families were safe.

And we've been doing this now for about 12 years. I mean the U.S. has been. And so, once people understand kind of what the population is that we're talking about here, I have not seen a lot of kind of pushback on that particular -- on this effort of welcoming the Afghans who risked their lives to help us.

CAMEROTA: And do you find it easy or hard to get them jobs?

SMITH: I think in this economy there's a lot of jobs to be had. I think it depends, right. So, we're in -- Refugee Services of Texas is in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Amarillo, and down in Harlingen. So, it kind of depends on the community, depends on the situation.

Up in Amarillo there's a lot of meat packing jobs available. And most of our communities the first jobs that a refugee will typically get may be in the service industry, may be at a hotel, may be at a restaurant.

And, no, we typically -- I'm getting a lot of calls from people who are looking for employees these days and want to connect in with our employment caseworkers here to be part of kind of the mix of where we try to connect our clients into work opportunities.

CAMEROTA: Well, Russell Smith, thank you for taking the time to explain it to us. We appreciate it.

SMITH: Sure, absolutely.

CAMEROTA: OK. So, people are waiting in line for hours for gasoline in Louisiana. And this could also impact how much you pay at the pump.

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CAMEROTA: More than half the gas stations in New Orleans are dry, and experts say the gas shortage is likely to get worse. CNN's Matt Egan joins us. So, Matt, what's causing the fuel shortage?

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS LEAD WRITER: Well, Alisyn, this is a nightmare and it's really being caused by this combination of, one, there's demand spikes as people move around the region and maybe try to get out of the region. Also, there's these supply problems being caused by the power outages. And so, this one-two punch has created these gas shortages. So, here's what we know. There is at least about 60 percent of gas stations in New Orleans

don't have fuel right now, 56 percent in Baton Rouge, 20 percent in Lafayette. Now that's according to Gas Buddy. And that doesn't include gas stations that might have gas but no power. So, this is obviously causing significant issues.

We're hearing about reports of people whose cars are -- they've had to strand their cars because they've run out of gasoline. Some people are waiting eight or nine hours in line for gas, some people, they're on foot, they're waiting hours to fill up containers.

Now, industry officials are telling me, you know, people should not overreact here. Panic buying more fuel than they actually need. You know, filling up every container they can find is only going to make the situation worse. We learned that when the Colonial Pipeline was shut down in May because of hackers. There was immense panic buying and it actually made the situation worse.

CAMEROTA: But how long do they think people are going to have wait? how long is this gas shortage going to last?

EGAN: Well, that's the big question. I think the key is the power situation. Because what's next, the next challenge is the refineries. And the refineries, we know that a lot of them have been shut down. They're trying to restart but they really can't do that without power.

And these shortages are not actually being caused by the refinery situation yet because refiners they have stockpiles on site. But at some point, that's going to run out. So clearly the power situation needs to get improved because people, they need gas right now.

CAMEROTA: It is such a mess. Matt Egan, thank you for your reporting. And THE LEAD with Jake Tapper starts right now.

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