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Residents Question Water, Air Quality After Toxic Train Wreck; Police: Shooter Had 2 Handguns, Bus Ticket, List Of Targets; CDC: Young Children Not Eating Enough Veggies And Fruits Daily. Aired 1:30- 2p ET

Aired February 16, 2023 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Obviously then there are other questions about water use, like when you take a shower, et cetera. What is safe and what do we know about the water quality right now?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And all very valid questions. The state and local officials are saying that the municipal water supply has been tested and that it is safe. Now those people who have wells, what they are suggesting is if you have a well, you should still continue drinking bottled water until your well water is tested. I spoke to a woman who lives just downstream from where we are right now. There were dead fish in the stream behind her home. She has a well. She has been drinking bottled water. And she is still waiting at last check for someone to come out and test her well water. So for those people who are in East Palestine who are using well water, private well water, the suggestion is that you continue using bottled water until testing can be completed.

HUNT: All right, important information. Jason Carroll, thanks very much for your reporting on this. We really appreciate it.

CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir joins us now. Bill, good to see you. Some people in the town say that they've had a hard time breathing or they felt burning in their eyes. And obviously we're just seeing pictures. Ohio was confirmed thousands of fish died in the wake of the train wreck. I mean can you tell us and help us understand what's in these chemicals that made this such a disaster?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. It's really a sort of a witch's brew cocktail of at least five different chemicals. Some of them were not initially revealed to the folks there. So that's one big reason for the mistrust you're seeing today. The big one at the top, vinyl chloride, this is what is in PVC piping. As it burns, it turns into both phosgene, which was a World War II or World War I weapon, a respiratory weapon as well as hydrochloric acid.

We saw that when the wildfires took down Paradise, California, and those homes burned, the pipes, the PVC pipes that melted, really soiled the water supply there, tainted that as well. Benzene, these are carcinogens in long term exposure. These here, the butyl acrylate and the ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, testing my chemistry classes here, the warnings on these are aquatic life, nausea, breathing problems in the near term, aquatic life a long term.

And you talked about the fish kill, the 3,000 or 3,500 fish that were mentioned, they believe that's in a plume that's moving down the Ohio River. So they can sort of track that as well. And there's no new source of this chemical that's like a pipeline a spill or rupture that's continuingly pumping chemicals into the water supply. So they think by dilution of that in the water and then in the air by burning off all of that vinyl chloride on the early days there, a lot of that experts tell me is probably out of the air. But it's the soil that hasn't been moved yet that has residents worried about what's going to happen to that.

HUNT: Yes, I was going to say you walk through it that way. I mean, no wonder people are so concerned about this. Bill Weir, thank you so much for that update. We really appreciate it.

[13:33:11]

Still to come here, chilling new details about the Michigan State shooter, what we are learning about his guns, his ammunition, and his possible list of other targets.

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HUNT: Two guns, bus tickets, more ammunition and a list of targets. Today police revealed chilling new details about the deadly Michigan State shooting, including where the gunman may have been heading next. CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is in Lansing. Adrienne, what did we learn?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK, see, we learned that two guns recovered were purchased legally, but according to investigators, they were not registered. Investigators also telling us they recovered a backpack the shooter was carrying. And in that backpack, they found eight loaded magazines of nine millimeter ammunition. That's not all. They also discovered a pencil size pouch containing 50 loose rounds of ammo and two empty magazines.

Investigators saying today inside of a wallet, the shooter had, they found a note. And that note was two pages. It listed businesses this 43-year-old shooter wanted to target. Investigators saying among the businesses was a warehouse where he once worked. They also told us about the encounter before that 43-year-old man ended his life.

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LT. RENE GONZALEZ, MICHIGAN STATE POLICE: Two LPD officers made contact with the shooter, approximately 20 feet from McRae. They exited their vehicle, ordered him to put his show his hands. However, he produced a weapon and then killed himself. It does appear that from the body worn camera, that McRae did not verbalize anything to the officers prior to him shooting himself or taking his own life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS: We didn't find out why McRae targeted Michigan State University. It's something investigators say they still don't know. Kasie?

HUNT: Adrienne Broaddus, thanks very much for that update.

[13:40:01]

Let's bring in CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller, to help us understand this a little better. John, thanks for being here. In his note, the shooter did list several targets, some of which he seemed to have a history with, and there were some potential misgivings there. But at the end of the day, he chose Michigan State. What do you take away from this reality?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So, in the note, he says he has 20 members of his teams and that they'll be going out to the other target. But he states, you know, my name is Anthony McRae, and I'm going to shoot up the State University. So he basically assigns that location to himself.

But having talked to profilers who have reviewed the contents of the note, you know, what they suggest is here is a loner. He has no relationships. He has no friends. There are no teams. But he has created this note to increase the feelings of fear, the menace that he possesses, to make himself out to be this leader of a group to help stoke that fear and his target list. The question there is, Kasie, did he expect to get away with the shooting at the university and then to go through other targets that were mentioned in his note, perhaps leaving the note behind again to instill fear? Or was he always intending to either be confronted by police or take his own life?

HUNT: Right, so one of the things that stuck out to me, the gunman also made references to past active shooter situations. He specifically mentioned the King Supermarket shooting in Colorado. What does that say to you? And the idea that these are copycat shootings, I mean, what can be done about that?

MILLER: Well, in his note, he makes a reference to the same supermarket but in Colorado Springs as opposed to boulder, where the shooting happened. So the question with people at the behavioral Science Unit at FBI Academy in Quantico who are going over the note are probably raising is, did he mix that up or confuse that? Was that a target that means something to him because it's in a different city? What do all of these targets mean? But, you know, he paints himself to be the victim, Kasie.

He says, people hate me. They made me what I am today, a killer. No one noticed me. Why do they hate me? I am a person. So what you get the sense of is not just that he's a loner, which his family told us, but this increasing feeling of isolationism, injustice collector, all of these tiny, slights or things that bothered him in his contacts with these locations have built up to the point that he's created a target list and that he is trying to rewrite his story.

HUNT: Really, really tragic outcome from all of that. John Miller, thanks very much for digging into that a little bit with us. We really appreciate it.

[13:43:12]

A new report released minutes ago raises new concerns about America's youngest children. But the solution could be as close as the produce aisle.

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HUNT: America's youngest children are falling short in their daily intake of fruits and vegetables. That's the word from a CDC report that was released just minutes ago. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now with more. Elizabeth, I have a three- year-old, tell me what I need to know.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Kasie, what you need to know is that many American children just aren't getting enough fruits and vegetables. Let's take a look at what this CDC report found. They found and this is a huge study with more than 18,000 children ages one to five. So we're talking little children. Almost half did not eat a vegetable every day. About one in three did not eat a fruit every day. Almost 60 percent drank at least one sugary beverage a week. And this is at a time when childhood obesity rates are so high.

Let's take a look at that. So 13 percent of children ages two to five are obese, 21 percent of children ages six to 11. When you put it all together, it's 14 million children and adolescents in the U.S. who are obese. And I know, as a mom of four, how hard it is to get your children to eat right. It definitely is a struggle, especially when packaged foods are so attractive. Kasie?

HUNT: Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much for that update. We really appreciate it.

[13:49:04]

Another leak, another delay for a mission to the International Space Station, we're going to have the latest, coming up next.

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HUNT: Stranded in space. An astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts at the International Space Station could have to wait months longer to return to Earth after issues with multiple spacecraft needed to bring them back. CNN's Kristin Fisher joins me now. Kristin, what's going on here?

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE & DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: Kasie, it all boils down to, believe it or not, coolant leaks on not one, but two Russian spacecrafts in a coolant leak in space much more difficult to fix than a coolant leak on Earth when you can just drive your car to a garage and get it fixed. This first leak, you can see it right there, it happened in December. That coolant spewing out into space from the Soyuz Spacecraft, whereas cosmo says that leak was actually caused by a micrometeorite strike.

But then, just a few days ago, a second Russian spacecraft, a progress cargo ship, you see that brown moldy looking dot right there? Well, that's a second coolant leak. Russia doesn't know what caused that leak. They're still investigating. They say the two incidents aren't related. But still, this is highly unusual, very problematic for the three person crew that was planning on riding that first Soyuz Spacecraft back to Earth.

[13:55:07]

And that crew involves two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut, Frank Rubio. You can see him there on the right. And so now Russia is delaying the launch of the spacecraft that was supposed to be their replacement ride to replace that first one that caused that sprung a coolant leak. So, Kasie, this crew, those three astronauts, two cosmonauts, one NASA astronaut, they were all expected to spend about six months in space.

Now, this means that they could be spending about twice as long. They could be spending up to a year in space. It's happened before, but just imagine if you're that crew or you're the families on the ground waiting for them, you think you're going to be gone for six months, you're gone for about a year. It could happen.

HUNT: I was just going to say my heart goes out to the families waiting for them to come back. Kristin Fisher, thanks very much for that.

And that's going to do it for us this hour. Thank you so much for joining us. And don't go anywhere. We're going to have a lot more news coming up next.

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