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1 Dead, 4 Critically Injured in California Church Shooting; 10 People Killed in Racially Motivated Shooting in Buffalo; Survivor Speaks About Deadly Mass Shooting in Buffalo; Kim Jong-Un Sends Army to Tackle COVID Outbreak; Taiwan Lives with Virus as China Pursues Zero-COVID; Northeastern U.S. Under Severe Thunderstorm Threat. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired May 16, 2022 - 04:30   ET

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

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[04:31:20]

ISA SOARES, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everyone. A weekend of deadly shootings in the U.S. has refocused guns, race and domestic terrorism in America.

The mass shooting in Buffalo Saturday was one of four lethal gun incidents this weekend alone. We'll get to that in a moment.

But first, California authorities say one person is dead and four others critically wounded after a gunman opened fire at a church in Laguna Woods.

A suspect, believed to be an Asian man in his 60s, is in custody. Authorities say he was stopped before law enforcement arrived, thanks to extraordinary actions by churchgoers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF HALLOCK, UNDERSHERIFF, ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: We believe a group of churchgoers detained him and hogtied his legs with an extension cord and confiscated at least two weapons from him. He was detained when the deputies arrived.

That group of churchgoers displayed what we believe is exceptional heroism and bravery in intervening to stop the suspect. They undoubtedly prevented additional injuries and fatalities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: Authorities say this kind of violence should never have occurred within the sanctuary, of course, of the church and are promising a full investigation.

U.S. President Joe Biden and the first lady are set to travel to Buffalo, New York, tomorrow to visit the families of the victims of this weekend's deadly mass shooting.

At least 10 people were killed in what authorities say was a racially motivated attack. An official says the 18-year-old suspect told authorities he was targeting the black community.

Now investigators are reviewing a 180-page manifesto posted online. In it, the suspect allegedly details how he had been radicalized online and describes himself as a white supremacist.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has more on the investigation from Buffalo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME & JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Police revealing new information on Sunday, saying that the alleged shooter received a mental health evaluation last year after an unspecified threat at a school -- at his school where he lives.

They say that the state police brought him to the hospital and he received this evaluation. We don't have any other information. They say, up until this point, he has not been on anyone's radar.

They also say that the weapons that were used in this case, the two that they found, and then the one that was used in this shooting, were all purchased legally.

They are investigating his social media and his Internet access, indicating that he was researching this location. They also say that he was here on Friday, out here, looking around, indicating that perhaps that he was planning this for some time.

Also investigators say that his parents, his parents have been cooperating.

But he also, according to sources, has been making statements to investigators, what they have described to me as being disturbing.

And talked about the motivation, saying that it is very clear, investigators say, that he came here to target this community, specifically to target the black community, and that his targets were black people inside the Tops Supermarket.

Shimon Prokupecz, Buffalo, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOARES: We are hearing from survivors of the Buffalo shooting, including one woman who was working at the supermarket alongside her daughter. She described the terrifying moments after shots rang out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRAGRANCE HARRIS STANDFIELD, BUFFALO SHOOTING SURVIVOR: My daughter was crouched down in the front for the entire shooting. We kept running until I got all the way to the back door, the back door was stuck.

But Morris, my co-worker, who told us to run to the back, he's also the one who was able to get the door open for us to get out of the building. We were afraid. We didn't know if someone was on the other side of the door.

[04:34:59]

She was in panic mode, but she did not move because she didn't want to be noticed that she was -- that she was there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: Standfield and her daughter were eventually reunited after police arrested the suspected shooter.

And we are learning more about the victims of the mass shooting in Buffalo.

The youngest of the 10 people killed was just 32 years old. The niece of another victim, 62-year-old Geraldine Tally, says her aunt was, quote, "the life of the party," and was just doing her regular grocery shopping when she was killed.

Another victim, 77-year-old Pearl Young, the long-time substitute teacher, is being described as a true pillar in the community. The oldest victim was 85-year-old Ruth Whitfield, She was the mother of Buffalo's retired fire commissioner.

New York's attorney general spoke about the victims as leaders gathered in Buffalo for a memorial service. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LETITIA JAMES, (D), NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: I heard about the senior citizen who planted trees on her block.

I heard about the woman who just went to visit her husband in the nursing home and stopped by Tops to get something to eat.

I heard about the young gentleman who worked in the office of Senator Kennedy who survived, who was shot through the neck and who -- God basically spared his life.

I've held in my arms a young lady who worked at Tops who was so afraid that she was about to die, who witnessed the bloodshed, who shaked and quivered in my arms this morning, who was afraid for her community, but afraid also for herself.

This event will not define Buffalo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: New York's governor has now announced nearly $3 million in funding for the victims as well as the families of those affected by Saturday has mass shooting.

Buffalo is just the latest city devastated by a mass shooting that authorities say was motivated by hate. Now a number of community leaders are calling for more to be done to stop hate speech from spreading online. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BYRON BROWN, (D-BUFFALO)We need to send a message that there's no place on the Internet for hate speech, for hate indoctrination, for spreading hate manifesto. So I'd like to see real deliberate action taken on gun control and ending hate speech on the Internet.

DERRICK JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, NAACP: We have seen this before. The question is now, what? When will the Justice Department aggressively pursue these domestic terrorist cells that are populating on social media platforms?

When will social media platforms finally stand up to their community responsibility and remove -- remove these cells?

When will News Corp stop funding FOX News to promote theories that only divide and create tribalism using NFL funds?

We have to talk about now what. How are we going to pivot away from this domestic terrorism that we have seen?

For African-Americans, we know what it means for domestic terrorists not to be held accountable. It means, for us, more domestic terrorism.

We have to come to grips with white supremacist behavior and all of the racist dogma that's out there that's causing harm to the African- American community, Jewish community, Latino community. We have to stand up as a society.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: We will have much more on the latest mass shootings in the U.S. coming up on "EARLY START." That begins in about 20 minutes or so from now.

I want to show you these live images coming to us from Finland's parliament in Helsinki, as well as Sweden's parliament in Stockholm. You see the split screen on your screen.

Lawmakers on both sides really discussing the possibility of joining NATO.

We have been seeing this morning, of course, and hearing from the Finnish president the importance of this vote.

We've also been hearing from the U.S. Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, throwing his support, the U.S. support, find Finnish accession, of course, to NATO.

This, of course, would ditch both -- coming in, Sweden and Finland would ditch decades, of course, of neutrality for both of those countries and really ignoring the Russian threats of retaliation that we have been seeing.

Both countries really debating as of this hour this accession to NATO. As soon as we have that vote -- Nic Robertson said it may be as early as tomorrow -- we will bring that to you.

Now, North Korea won't say exactly how many of its citizens have COVID-19 but Kim Jong-Un is sending the military to help with a soaring number of so-called fever cases. Those details and a live report from the region. That's just ahead.

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You are watching CNN.

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SOARES: Welcome back, everyone. Well, North Korea is ramping up efforts to fight hundreds or thousands of what it calls "fever cases" after reporting its first outbreak of COVID-19.

Kim Jong-Un has ordered the military to help stabilize the country's medicine supply. State media says he strongly criticized the public health sector for its handling of the crisis during an emergency meeting on Sunday.

CNN's Blake Essig is following all of this for us from Tokyo.

And, Blake, do we know at this stage how widespread this is? And why are they still calling it fever cases here?

BLAKE ESSIG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The COVID crisis in North Korea seems to be getting worse by the day, Isa. But in a country that is extremely isolated under normal circumstances it's unlikely we will ever know just how widespread this outbreak is within its borders.

But clearly, the humanitarian crisis is serious as North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has recently declared a major national emergency, ordered all cities nationwide to lock down, and has said the current outbreak is the greatest turmoil to hit North Korea since its founding more than 70 years ago.

A telling statement from a current leader of a country that suffered a devastating famine back in the '90s when experts say about two million people died, although North Korea has never formally acknowledged how many people died during that famine.

Since North Korea identified or admitted its first ever case of COVID- 19 late last week, fever cases in North Korea have been surging with nearly 400,000 new cases reported yesterday.

According to state run media, KCNA, the outbreak started in late April and has since resulted in more than 1.2 million so-called fever cases. More than 560,000 people are still being isolated with symptoms. And 50 people have died.

Although it is unclear if those fevers or deaths were caused by COVID- 19.

And the reason for that uncertainty and the reason why we are still calling these cases fever cases instead of COVID cases is because of the level of testing in North Korea. It's extremely low.

[04:45:02]

And the vast majority of those people showing symptoms in all likelihood haven't been tested.

Making matters worse, experts say the country lacks significant health care infrastructure.

It's likely almost none of the country's 25 million people have been vaccinated. And to date, North Korea hasn't secured any vaccines through organizations like COVAX, despite being eligible.

Since the outbreak began, the country's bureau, led by Kim Jong-Un, has criticized the anti-epidemic sector for being careless, irresponsible and incompetent.

Because Kim says state-provided medicines weren't supplied to people through pharmacies in time and for failing to recognize the current crisis -- Isa?

SOARES: I know you will stay on top of the story for us.

Blake Essig there. Thanks very much, Blake.

While the coronavirus pandemic is hitting China's economy harder than expected, new government data for April shows the world's second- largest economy suffered stunning drops in retail sales as well as factory production. Unemployment also surged the second-highest level on record.

More than 30 cities remain under some form of lockdown.

In Shanghai, there may be hope in the city of 25 million is planning for life to return to normal next month after declaring the outbreak under control. Starting today, supermarkets, pharmacies and other businesses are set to gradually reopen.

Meanwhile, China's strict zero-COVID efforts are proving to be a very stark contrast with Taiwan's pandemic policies.

CNN's Will Ripley joins me now live from Taipei.

Will, how exactly is Taipei dealing with COVID? How successful has it been?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it was really successful during the pandemic when this was one of the few places on the planet where people were living a relatively normal life as the rest of the world was in lockdown.

It was largely because of this island's zero-COVID policy. They shut down their borders. They didn't allow anybody but residents and very special exceptions into the country. That allowed them to stay COVID free for more than a year, up until

last May when they had a major COVID outbreak and were hit with the reality that only 2 percent of the population at that time, about a year ago, had been vaccinated.

Well, fast forward a year later, you have close to 80 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Many people getting boosters.

And you also have COVID numbers that have surged to record highs with the highly transmissible Omicron variant. You are talking about tens of thousands of enough cases every day.

And yet, they are not going into lockdown. They are not panicking. Businesses are open. People are going to work.

Lots of people are getting COVID tests. I can tell you I can think of a dozen people who I know personally who tested positive for COVID over the last few days.

But unlike what's happening in China where they go to a government isolation center and they're quarantined, people are just told to stay in their homes, to keep getting tested as long as they don't have symptoms, and stay home until they stop testing positive.

So it's a shift away from this zero-COVID strategy.

SOARES: Yes.

RIPLEY: Because of the fact, they say, you know, with Omicron, even the toughest contact tracing and quarantine regimes aren't going to work.

And they have accepted that, for the economy to reopen, for this island to move on, they also have to evolve their approach.

And they have certainly watched the chaos in Shanghai and other places in China and have promised people here in Taiwan that won't be repeated here.

SOARES: Yes, quite a significant shift from Taiwan.

Will Ripley there in Taipei. Thanks very much, Will.

Still to come right here on the show, severe weather in store for parts of the U.S. With record high temperatures in some areas, making fire conditions worse. But that's not all.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: And millions of Americans on alert across the northeastern United States as line of active storms potentially approaching this region sometime this afternoon.

We will break down the details and show you the risk here. There's even a few isolated tornadoes in the northeast. More on that in a few minutes.

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SOARES: Well, South Asian countries are finding ways to beat a brutal heat wave. One town in northwest India deployed tanker trucks -- you can see on the streets -- giving everyone a welcome sprinkling of water. Temperatures have been above 40 degrees Celsius recently.

Pakistan is also struggling in the oppressive heat. And zoo workers are spraying animals with water and putting up shades to protect them from the searing sun.

Meanwhile, a cold front moving across the U.S. is brewing up severe thunderstorm conditions for the northeast. Damaging winds, hail and even tornadoes are at risk as the system moves east.

Pedram Javaheri shows us what's in store for Monday.

Good morning, Pedram.

JAVAHERI: Good morning to you, Isa.

Severe weather once a again across the eastern United States. This time, across the areas of the northeastern U.S., the most densely populated corner, where a level three on a scale of one to five in place for enhanced risk for severe weather.

Sixty million Americans in that area of level three to level two concern. And the storms are forecast to arrive sometime late this afternoon into this evening.

Certainly, Boston, New York, Philly, Washington all of them could see some very strong winds, some very heavy periods of rainfall for a few hours.

And the severe weather elements could bring large hail, maybe even a couple of tornadoes scattered about this region. Level of concern for tornadoes, about 5 percent chance for any given point within 25 miles of that given point. The odds are there.

But you will notice, as far north as Syracuse, as far south as Richmond, VA, that's where the thunderstorm potential could be for the most severe storms.

Notice over the last several days, five reports of tornadoes across the eastern half of the U.S., the vast majority related to wind and hail. This is kind of what we expect for portions of the northeast over the next few hours.

As far as temperatures are concerned, big-time heat towards the latter of the portion of the heat. We're talking about potentially some record temperatures.

As much as 150 record temps could be observed across the entirety of the southern United States, maybe even a couple in the northeast, like in the latter portion of the week.

But our friends in Texas have seen triple digit heat come back. And it's back in their forecast again by later this week.

Across portions of Colorado another fire to tell you about. The High Park Fire taking place across portions of south-central Colorado.

Notice this, almost all of the state is underneath drought conditions. And 1,100 acres consumed, 10 percent containment. So certainly, a lot of work to be done across that region.

The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, also watching this one grow rather quickly. Containment remains small. And the number is quickly approaching what would be the state's largest fire in its history.

Temperatures for today, 104 across Phoenix, 59 across Seattle. Temperatures in Boston touching almost 80 degrees -- Isa?

SOARES: Thank you very much, Pedram.

Now, the final four teams are set for the NBA playoffs. The Boston Celtics crushed the defending champs the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday, 109-81.

Grant Williams put up a career high 27 points as the Celtics advance to the eastern conference finals. Second seed Boston will face the top seeded Miami heat with game one set for Tuesday in Miami.

And the Dallas Mavericks shot down the Phoenix Suns with a dominant victory, 123-90. Luka Doncic put on a show with 35 points and 10 rebounds. The Mavs led by as many as 36 points as they advanced to the western conference finals.

[04:55:09]

Dallas will take on the Golden State Warriors Wednesday in San Francisco.

A heartfelt story we must tell but before we go. In the midst of war, Ukraine's folk rap group won this year's Eurovision song contest on a wave of good will.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much. Thank you for supporting Ukraine. This victory is for Ukrainian. (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: And news of that win made it all the way to troops hunkered down in the Mariupol steel plant, which has been under siege, you remember, from Russian forces for weeks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SINGING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: A soldier inside the Azovstal steel plant.

The orchestra ended their performance with a plea to the world to, quote, "Please help Ukraine."

And that does it here for me on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Isa Soares in London.

Coverage of the mass shootings in the United States continues on "EARLY START" with Laura Jarrett.

Do stay right here on CNN.

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