Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Calls for Action as Nation Shaken by Gun Violence; Lawmakers Under Pressure to Take Action in Wake of Shooting; Ellie Garcia was Killed Days Before Her 10th Birthday; Clashes Erupt Over Controversial Jerusalem Day March; China Begins to Ease Restrictions, Reboot Economy. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired May 30, 2022 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

ISA SOARES, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Isa Soares. If you're just joining us, let me bring you up to date with our top story this hour.

Services are expected to begin today for some of the victims of the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Funeral homes said they'll be covering the costs for the families of the 19 students and two teachers killed last week.

And the Justice Department has announced it will be reviewing the response from law enforcement to that shooting. The gunman was not killed until more than an hour after the first officers entered the school.

Well, Texas State Senate Democrats are demanding an emergency special session from the governor to address gun violence.

The Democratic caucus sent him a letter, saying in part: Texas has suffered more mass shootings over the past decade than any other state. After each of these mass killings, you have held press conferences and round tables promising things would change. After the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde those broken promises have never rung more hollow. This time the time to take real action is now.

Well, here's what one state Senator had to say to CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D) TEXAS STATE SENATOR: If I do nothing for the rest of my career but yell at Greg Abbott and others, they're not willing to listen, then that's what I'm going to do. We must have change. I have spent time with many of these families, and this is just heartbreaking. I just cannot do this anymore. It is heartbreaking. No family should go through what these people are going through.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: Well, on Friday the governor said Texas will consider new laws in response to the shooting, adding, quote, the status quo is unacceptable. But Texas isn't alone. More communities continue to deal with the pain caused by gun violence. There were several shootings reported across the country this weekend, and the annual rate of mass shootings in the United States is rising dramatically. According to the independent data and research group, Gun Violence Archive, in 2016 -- as you can see there -- there were 382 mass shootings. In 2020, the number nearly doubled to 610. In 2021 it was 692. And just five months into 2022, it's already over 220.

Meanwhile, a number of states, including Texas, have made their gun laws more lenient. Since 2009, as gun laws have changed, so have the rise in mass shootings in this state. Just last year, Texas made it legal for anyone to carry a hand gun in public without a permit or training. Governor Greg Abbott said that law instills freedom in the Lone Star State. But back in Washington, some hope the tragic shooting in Texas may inspire change in gun legislation among both Democrats as well as Republicans.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN): I'd like to see us restrict assault weapons if not a total ban. I'd like to see improvements on our background checks. I'd certainly like to see a red flag law. If somebody exhibits to law enforcement to probable cause that they're going to commit an act of violence against themselves or others, that they can have the weapons taken from them a period of time.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): I've got to tell you, I mean 90.9 percent of people that own ARs, we all know, are not going to walk into a school and do this. But the problem is for those that support the Second Amendment like me, we have to be coming to the table with ways to mitigate 18-year-olds buying these guns and walking into a school. My sides not doing that. Look, I have opposed a ban, you know, fairly recently. I think I'm open to a ban now.

SEN. BEN CARDIN (D-MD): I really do think that there is a real urgency that we can show that we can act. I'm confident if we can get a bill on the floor on the gun issues and can pass it, it will be the right signal to the American people. It probably won't go as far as I would like to see us go, but it will at least show the Congress can act.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): I sense a different feeling among my colleagues after Uvalde. Of course, ten years ago it was Sandy Hook and Parkland and so many other instances.

[04:35:00]

But it just is so compelling to see the photos of these young boys and girls, and to picture your own children or grandchildren captives of this mad man as he's killing them off one by one in that school, and realize it is time for us to do something. America is sick and tired of political excuses.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOARES: Now for years the NRA has been blamed by many for pushing Republicans to support loose gun laws. On Sunday CNN spoke with an NRA board member Judge Phillip Journey about how easy it is for a teenager to purchase a military-style rifle. Here's a bit of that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Should an 18-year-old have an AR-15? What's he going to do with it, go duck hunting?

JUDGE PHILLIP JOURNEY, NRA BOARD MEMBER: I don't know, should an 18- year-old have one in the army?

ACOSTA: They have military training in the army. This 18-year-old in Uvalde did not have military training. He turned 18 and he went out and bought an AR-15.

JOURNEY: And the fact is that these kinds of issues are far more complicated than whether we remove something from the public.

Now maybe we should start prosecuting convicted felons who are trying to buy gun because we get thousands of them every month.

ACOSTA: I know but, Judge, we hear that all the time and you have this 18-year-old kids shooting up shopping centers and schools and everything. They're not felons, they're just kids, and they have access to an ocean of guns in this country. It's an ocean -- we're swimming in guns.

JOURNEY: There were over -- well, we do have per capita a high number of firearms in this country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOARES: Did you hear him answer the question? I didn't. Well, House Democrat Ruben Gallego who served in the Marines, disputed Journey's comparison to teenagers having guns in the military and as civilians.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-AZ): They don't own those weapons. There're in the armory. Every bullet is accounted for. You do a background check before you get that weapon. There is a psychological test also before you can get that weapon. You have to -- you know, at least in the Marine Corps it's almost 2 1/2 weeks of just dry firing before you have to shoot that one weapon. You have to re-qualify every year.

If you want to have those standards, I'm up for those standards. But for them to say that, you know, that 18-year-old that's grabbing a gun off the street or off some dealer is the same as an 18-year-old in the military, it is absolutely not even -- they're not even close to each other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOARES: And while lawmakers and gun advocates debate, gun legislation for families of those who have been lost to gun violence mourn their loved ones. CNN's Dana Bash spoke to uncle of a Uvalde victim and Rob Elementary School student Ellie Garcia's father. Ellie would have turned ten next Saturday. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Did you remember the moment you heard about the shooting?

ADRIAN ALONZO, NIECE ELLIE GARCIA KILLED IN SCHOOL SHOOTING: It wasn't until the moment where I saw a message that the bus routes were not going to run that day and for parents to go pick up their children at other campuses. Police presence will be there. It was on the school Facebook page. I couldn't, I couldn't think. And I said to my boss, I said, hey, I have to go pick up my son. There's no bus route.

When I got to the school, just seeing the police presence there, a police officer, border patrol agent, highway patrolman standing every 10 feet with a rifle in their hand, it starts sinking in. Like what is going on?

BASH: As a parent that must be terrifying.

ALONZO: I can't explain the joy I had when I saw my son walk out of those doors and I finally had him. But as a parent, I wanted to squeeze him right there. But I wanted to get him out because I didn't want him to see all that. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

BASH (voice-over): But then he called his sister-in-law and learned his niece Ellie was unaccounted for. He went to the civic center to help find her.

ALONZO: The school official told me there's no more children here, they've all been picked up. Do you have a list? Do you have a list of the students that were here? Can you check if her name is on there? And then that school official -- I could see it in her eyes, her eyes became glassy and teary. And she said, sir, they'll make a statement soon. I said, but I'm missing my niece, she's not here. They'll make a statement soon.

I knew that something went wrong. I saw a Facebook post being shared around. And it was a whiteboard of all the teachers' names that were in the civic center, and Ellie's teachers were not one of them.

So, then I found that's when they announced the first victim Eva Mireles. They announced her, she was Ellie's teacher. And in my mind, I tried to stay optimistic, but the reality of it was sinking in at that time.

[04:40:00]

More victims were being, you know, children were being published and they were in her class. And it wasn't until my wife told me that they were taking DNA swabs from all the parents and I instantly knew she was gone. Why else would they need DNA swabs to find a missing child? And sure enough, about an hour later my wife called me. She says, they found her. She didn't make it.

BASH: I'm so sorry.

ALONZO: By far the worst day of my life. And I'll never forget that day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOARES: Well, Ellie Garcia will be among 18 other children and two teachers remembered by the community and families in Uvalde, Texas. If you would like to help visit CNN.com/impact. We'll be back after a very short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOARES: A leftist former guerrilla and A social media star headed for the next round in Colombia's presidential election. The left-wing Gustavo Petro will face off against the populist and self-proclaimed king of TikTok, Rodolfo Fernandez on June 19th. Their runoff comes after the first round of voting finished on Sunday. Petro is the front runner. He's promising to overhaul an economy hit by the fallout of COVID and plus social unrest and violence brought by the drug trade. Hernandez has run a colorful social media campaign and drawn comparisons to Donald Trump. He is promising to clean up corruption.

[04:45:00]

Now controversial Israeli march through Jerusalem sparked fresh clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians on Sunday. Thousands waved Israeli flags for the annual Jerusalem Day march. Some chanted death to Arabs while others said they want peace. The march drew protests from Palestinians and clashes broke out across the region. The Red Crescent says 80 Palestinians were injured in Jerusalem while more than 160 were injured in the West Bank.

Journalist Elliott Gotkine is in Jerusalem with more. And Elliott, this of course is supposed to be a day of celebration, not of provocation. But it did turn ugly as we just outlined. What more can you tell us?

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: Isa, I don't think there was any surprise that there were some clashes that took place. There were more than 70,000 Israelis taking part in this annual flag march in which Israelis celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem after they captured -- after Israel captured the eastern part of the city from Jordan in 1967.

Clashes, as I say, were expected and it wasn't just between the Israeli security forces and Palestinians. There were clashes between some of the marchers, especially some of the extremists among the marches and Palestinians as well.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saying there will be zero tolerance to those groups, which he said, described as a minority which came to set the area ablaze.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid described a couple of these groups. One known is La Familia, the other as Lehava, as a disgrace. Now more than 60 people in total were arrested. We've asked the police to break that down, if you like, among Palestinians and Israelis, but they haven't got back to us just yet. But fears that this could eventually escalate into some kind of all-

out war. The sort that we saw you a year ago between the Hamas controlled Gaza strip in Israel proved unfounded. There were Israeli jets circling above the Gaza strip. Hamas had threatened to fire rockets into Israel if the march went ahead. That didn't happen. And in fact, the only object flying about the old city of Jerusalem that wasn't expected was a small drone carrying a Palestinian flag, as a kind of rebuttal to all the Israeli flags being flown below - Isa.

SOARES: Elliott Gotkine for us in Jerusalem there. Thanks very much, Elliott.

Well, authorities in Nepal said they located the crash site of a missing plane and recovered 16 bodies. The Tara Air flight crashed on Sunday with 22 people on board. Authorities believe the crash was caused by poor weather in the area. The flight was traveling from the city of Pokhara to Jomsom when air control lost contact. Officials say the search for survivors continues.

And just ahead right here on CNN NEWSROOM, China forges ahead with zero COVID even as cases decline. And officials loosen some restrictions on public life. We'll take you live to Hong Kong for the very latest.

[04:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOARES: A lot of Americans who were hoping to get out of town for the Memorial Day holiday are out of luck. Airlines have already canceled more than 200 flights set for Monday. More than 4,000 flights canceled since Friday. So far Delta Airlines is the most affected. This comes on the heels of the carrier announcing cutbacks to its summer schedule.

New York City has been under a state of emergency for more than a week over the nationwide shortage of infant formula. The move is intended to prevent price gouging. On Sunday CNN scanned shelves of retailers across several New York boroughs for baby formula and found that not much inventory had changed -- as you can see there -- since last weekend.

Now, after months of COVID lockdowns and mass testing in cities throughout the country, China's gradually beginning to ease restrictions to reboot its weakened economy. In Shanghai all businesses will be able to operate beginning on Wednesday. In Beijing, there has been a partial reopening of some public places. For more on all this I'm joined by Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. And Kristie, this can't come quick enough for those who have now been for months now really facing these very stringent restrictions. Talk us through what we can expect in the days ahead.

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, on Sunday Beijing, the Chinese capital, already reopened part of its public transport system as well as gyms and libraries and some shopping malls and shopping centers. And on Sunday government officials in Shanghai announced that they plan to remove, what they called, unreasonable curbs on business starting this Wednesday on June 1.

Of course, Shanghai is the financial capital of China. The megacity of 25 million that has been under this punishing and paralyzing lockdown for two months now. And it is inching ever so closely to reopening. The Shanghai government also announced that testing requirements for local residents will be relax so that they will be able to venture and gain access to public areas. All in a bid to just encourage people to go back to the office, to go back to work.

Shanghai government also announcing a raft of measures to boost the economy, like cutting some taxes for car purchases, for speeding up the issuances of local government bonds, speeding up the approval process for property deals, et cetera. But CNN earlier today reached out to the American Chamber of Commerce in shanghai for their reaction on this action plan towards reopening that's taking place in Shanghai right now. And, yes, they welcomed this action plan, but they also expressed a number of concerns.

They're very concerned about the closed loop system that will still be in place after June the first. This requires employees to live and work on-site in a bubble. They also expressed concern about local bureaucracy and red tape. I'm going to bring up the statement for you.

This is from Eric Zheng, the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and he tells CNN, quote, while after June the first, businesses no longer need approval to get on the white list for reopening, all too often subdistrict, and even neighborhood officials have prevented or slowed the resumption of business operations by imposing excessive red tape, unquote.

So, Isa, even as Shanghai eases these COVID curbs and restrictions, the uncertainty, the economic uncertainty is still there. Back to you.

SOARES: Kristie Lu Stout for us in Hong Kong this hour, thanks so much, Kristie.

[04:55:00]

Now, in the world of motor sports, a swede took the checkered flag for just the second time in the history of the Indy 500. Marcus Eriksson won the 106th running of the race in a dramatic finish. You can see -- he took a gulp from the victors traditional bottle of milk before pouring it all over his face.

And just hours earlier, Mexico's Sergio Perez won the Monaco Grand Prix. It was the Red Bull driver's first win at Formula One showcase event. He edged out Carlos Sainz of Ferrari by 1.1 second. Rain delayed the start of the race by an hour, but Perez said it was a dream come true when he crossed the finish line. I think it's the first time I've seen rain in Monaco.

And the teams are now set for the NBA finals. The Boston Celtics will advance after beating the Miami Heat 100-96 in game 7 of the eastern conference finals. The Celtics have a tough match up. They'll take on the Golden State Warriors who have home court advantage. Game one is the best of seven series, Thursday in San Francisco. Of course, we'll bring you all the very latest.

And that does it here for me on CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you very much for your company. I'm Isa Soares in London. Our coverage of the mass shooting in Texas continues on "EARLY START" with Christine Romans and Laura Jarrett. I shall see you tomorrow. Have a wonderful day. Bye- bye.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:00:00]