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Estimate: 70% of Formula Out of Stock at Some Point Last Week; Soaring Gas Prices Adding to High Cost of Memorial Weekend Travel; Survivor Describes Being in Room Where Students, Teachers Killed; How Victims Will Cope With Trauma of Massacre; Sources: Russian Forces Send Ukrainians to "Filtration Camps". Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired May 27, 2022 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[13:33:37]
ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Welcome back. We'll continue our coverage out of Texas in a moment but a couple of other headlines now.
Parents are still struggling to find baby formula. According to one estimate, 70 percent of infant formula products nationwide were out of stock at some point last week. So this crisis is far from over.
CNN senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, is joining us with more details.
Elizabeth, when are parents who rely on this formula to feed their children going to get some relief?
DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Ana, it's really impossible to predict. I think we can safely say it's not going to be immediately.
Let's take a look at two new developments that bring hope but not immediate hope.
So the food giant, Dannen, is going to ship from Europe enough formula for 5.3 million eight-ounce bottles to the U.S. That's by the end of June. Let's hope that date moves up some.
Also, Abbott, the plant in the United States, will reopen the plant and will have formula available on or around June 20th. Again, let's hope that that date moves up.
Ana, in both cases, these will be specialized formula for children with allergies since those parents have been having the toughest time finding a formula that works for their children -- Ana?
CABRERA: Elizabeth, thank you for that update.
And if you're hitting the road this weekend, brace yourself. The average price for regular gas is at an all-time high, $4.60 a gallon. It's not stopping an estimated 40 million people from traveling this weekend. [13:35:02]
But as CNN's Pete Muntean reports, for some people, the price is too high.
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PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ana, the traffic is building on Interstate 395 in D.C. and so is the expense.
Kicking off this busy Memorial Day travel period and the start of the summer travel season, $4.60. That is the national average for a gallon of regular gas.
It so expensive. And so many things are going up, food, hotels, airfare. And this is only just the start.
(voice-over): Single dad, Eric Stevens, says he makes $110,000 a year. But that is not enough to afford a trip to the lake. Here in Los Angeles, $6 a gallon gas has kept his plans in park.
ERIC STEVENS, ENCINO, CA, RESIDENT: Maybe for the affluent, they can afford it. For me to go anywhere is minimum of a $200 decision. And you haven't fed your kids or done anything else.
MUNTEAN: GasBuddy says holiday weekend gas prices are the highest since 2012. But the pain goes beyond the pump. New data says hotels have jumped 42 percent compared to last year. Airfare is up 6 percent.
ANDREW GROSS, SPOKESMAN, AAA: This will likely be one of the most expensive Memorial Day periods we've ever seen.
MUNTEAN: Even still, AAA thinks Americans will not be stopped, traveling to top destinations, such as Orlando, Seattle, Miami, and Las Vegas.
The latest projection, 34.9 million people will drive 50 miles or more around the five days around Memorial Day.
(on camera): Do you think that the numbers will be all far off on the projection?
GROSS: Our projections have always been pretty accurate. But we've never been trying to project in an environment like this.
MUNTEAN (voice-over): The new fear is this expensive start to summer travel could last. GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan thinks the average price of gas will not dip below $4.50 for months.
PATRICK DE HAAN, HEAD OF PETROLEUM ANALYSIS, GASBUDDY: I don't think the fuel price will slow down many. It may slow down some. But certainly, there's still a very healthy appetite to hit the road this summer.
STEVENS: You ready for school, baby girl?
MUNTEAN: Not so for Eric Stevens who says he's choosing to pay for his daughter's day care over a road trip.
STEVENS: Fun has been postponed for the indefinite future, especially the way things are going.
While I'd like to say our hope is there's an end in sight, I just don't see one.
MUNTEAN (on camera): One more data point here, Ana. When you adjust the gas price right now for inflation, this is the highest we've seen gas prices since Memorial Day, 2012. On the roads, it's going to feel a lot more like 2019.
The point is, you got to be patient and really pad your wallet. This trip is going to cost you -- Ana?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CABRERA: Pete Muntean, thank you.
Up next, an 11-year-old girl shares her story, what happened the moment the shooter entered her classroom, the final words he uttered to her teacher and how she survived. The stunning details just ahead.
And what happens long after the news cameras are gone and the victims are buried? How do these children cope in the future with such a tragic past?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: I got really scared. And I didn't know who was hurt or dead. And then we started looking around on Facebook, and then I realized that all the people I knew were dead now.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What do you mean? How many?
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: I knew all of them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[13:43:11]
CABRERA: Now to a CNN exclusive. An 11-year-old survivor describes being in the classroom the gunman first entered. Miah Cerrillo didn't want to go on camera, but she did want to share her story with the world.
My colleague, Nora Neus, a producer at CNN, sat down with Miah and talked about their conversation.
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NORA NEUS, CNN PRODUCER: One of her teachers got an email that there was a shooter in the building and went to the door and he was right there and they made eye contact. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The shooter made eye contact with the teacher?
NEUS: With the teacher.
And then he shot out the window in the door.
And then Miah says it just happened all so fast. He backed the teacher into the classroom and he made eye contact with the teacher, again, looked her right in the eye and said goodnight and then shot her and killed her.
BERMAN: He said goodnight before he shot her?
NEUS: He said goodnight.
And then it happened pretty fast after that as well. He started open firing in the classroom. He hit the other teacher, a lot of Miah's friends. At that point, Miah was hit by fragments of the bullets. You could even see them yesterday, I mean, on her back, on her shoulders, the back of her head.
BERMAN: The shooter then, she says, went into the adjoining classroom?
NEUS: Yes. So, he went through these doors to the adjoining classroom. And at that point, Miah could hear screams. She heard a lot more gunfire.
And then she said she heard music. She thinks it was the gunman that put it on. He started blasting sad music.
And I asked her, like what was that? What kind of music? What do you mean by that? And she said -- she just said it sounded like "I want people to die" music.
BERMAN: What did Miah do then?
[13:44:58]
NEUS: So, she had a friend next to her that she was pretty sure was already dead and was laying on the ground bleeding out. And she put her hands in her friend's blood and then smeared it, she said, all over her body.
She wanted to seem like -- she wanted to look like she was dead. She was scared that the gunman was going to come back through that adjoining door back into the classroom and she wanted to be able to play dead.
BERMAN: She also told you that she called 911.
NEUS: Yes. So, after she smeared the blood all over her body, she and a friend went and were able to take the phone off of one of the teachers who had already been killed.
And they called 911 and they were actually able to make contact with the dispatcher. And they talked to a dispatcher for a little while and told them what was going on inside.
And Miah kept saying -- telling me that she kept saying, we are in trouble, we are in trouble, like please come, please come, we are in trouble.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CABRERA: And again, Miah Cerrillo didn't want to go on camera, but she did want to get that out. We're told she didn't want to speak to a male because of fear. She would only talk with a female.
And after that, we're also learning Miah's family says they're planning to get her into therapy.
Joining us is Joel Dvoskin. He's a clinical and forensic psychologist and professor at the University of Arizona.
Joel, thank you for being here.
I think you have an important role in helping all of us through the trauma, especially the families that are impacted firsthand. That little girl and the other kids, so many experienced just incredible trauma inside that school. It's horrific.
Your advice for their parents as they help them move forward?
JOEL DVOSKIN, CLINICAL AND FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST & PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA: Well, I think to not think of it in the short run, first of all, that whatever help kids will need should be thought about over a significant amount of time. It could be weeks or months or years.
Often, when there's a community tragedy like this, a lot of help comes flowing into the area where it happened for a brief amount of time. But often people can't really talk about it right after it happens. But they might two months later, three months later, six months later.
The second thing is to let them take the lead and to do more listening than talking. Like your grandmother said, you've got two ears and one mouth for a reason.
The more that people can talk at their own pace that means an ability for us helpers to tolerate silence and to give people time to answer in the best way they can.
Probably, as much as anything, I would say, do not lie. It's so tempting to want to give kids comforting lies. But they need to trust you now more than they ever have in their life.
And if you lie -- they're smart. They're way smarter than we think they are. And they're going to figure out that we lied and then they won't believe anything.
The last thing I would say is when a kid asks a question is just answer the question. Don't tell them everything you know. Let them kind of drive how much detail they want. CABRERA: OK. I appreciate all of that. Good information.
Mental health is such a critical problem that needs to be addressed in this nation right now.
We are told the gunman in Uvalde dropped out of high school. Sounds like he had sketchy attendance while he was there. He's been described as being bullied, violent at times, a loner.
Are these warning signs? And how could they be addressed?
DVOSKIN: You know, one of the biggest myths that you hear over and over again is that there's warning signs. It's obvious. The person had this, this, and this.
There are some characteristics or situations that you see repeatedly in these kinds of cases, but they're so vague that they apply to lots and lots of people.
Millions of people dropped out of school. They probably need help, but they're not going to shoot anybody. Same thing with the other characteristics that you see.
You see depression or anger. Well, lots of people are depressed and lots of people are angry. And they should get help. But it doesn't mean they're going to shoot anybody.
So the notion that we can predict this stuff before it happens, I think is really disingenuous, that what we're doing is -- we already know what happened, so now we look back and explain it. The phrase "Monday morning quarterbacking" comes to mind.
[13:50:10]
Nobody was calling the police to say, hey, this guy is going to do something. Because we didn't know that. Except for threats. Threats are really meaningful warning signs and all threats should be taken seriously.
CABRERA: Well, I think everybody tries to look back and see what possible signs may have been missed to try to learn from this experience, to try to make sense of how someone could do such a monstrous thing.
Joel Dvoskin, thank you so much for lending your expertise to us.
We'll be right back.
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CABRERA: I want to bring you up to speed with developments out of the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian air force says it shot down a Russian fighter over Kherson. But to the east, Russian forces reportedly are gaining ground.
Meanwhile, multiple sources say the Biden administration plans to send new weapons to Ukraine.
Let me bring in CNN's Suzanne Malveaux live for us.
Suzanne, we're getting reports that Russia is de-populating parts of eastern Ukraine. Explain.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, you talk to people here in Lviv and they say they are the lucky ones to live in the west or escape early on in this war.
[13:55:01]
Because they say those who have been left behind, friends and family, in the eastern regions now controlled by Russia are going through a process called "filtration." It is a process of dehumanizing, humiliating and trying to control the local Ukrainian population there.
Often, these family members, they are removed from their relatives, they are stripped, they are interrogated, they are beaten. Their fingerprints, their cell phones, their documents are taken. They're going through their social media.
They are trying to find -- Russians are trying to find anything that is sympathetic with the Ukrainian cause or Ukrainian military.
If they pass this process, they get a certification. They're able to leave and potentially visit with their relatives. If not, they stay in that area, sometimes given no explanation.
Human Rights Watch saying those Ukrainians do not necessarily have to be thrown in the back of a truck, but many are put in a situation where they don't have a choice.
You get on the bus, you go to filtration, and then to Russia, or you die in the shelling. These are forced transfers forbidden under the laws of war.
Just one of many of the atrocities that Ukrainians, as well as officials, are saying occurred here -- Ana?
CABRERA: OK, Suzanne, thank you. We're not going to let up on our coverage in Ukraine, either.
Thank you very much for joining us today. What a week. Wishing you peace and comfort, your whole family's health this weekend. Hug your loved ones close.
Our coverage continues right after this.
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