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Romarr Gipson Back Behind Bars; Inside a Sudanese Refugee Camp; Children Look For Safety In Uganda; Movie Shoot Mistaken For Crime in Progress
Aired June 20, 2006 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, another ominous sign from North Korea. A Japanese news agency quotes a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman as disowning earlier agreements not to test missiles. The U.S., South Korea, Japan and other nations are bracing as Pyongyang apparently prepares to test a missile that could reach the West Coast of the United States. The U.N. secretary general is urging North Korea to listen to other countries.
New accommodations for one-time Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. He arrived in the Netherlands where he will be tried on war crimes charges. The former strongman is accused of everything, from inciting murder and torture to looting and burning homes during the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor was arrested about four months ago as he tried to escape his home in exile Nigeria. He is the first former African leader to face war crimes prosecution.
He was just seven-years-old when he was falsely accused of murder. Now he's a teen and behind bars again, charged in a double shooting in Chicago. Reporter Gaynor Hall has more on a troubling story from our affiliate CLTV.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GAYNOR HALL, CLTV REPORTER (voice-over): 15-year-old Romarr Gipson and his 18-year-old stepbrother, Roman Foreman in bond court Sunday morning. A judge set bond at $500,000 each. The teens are charged with aggravated battery with a firearm stemming from a shooting Wednesday at this gas station 123 and Halsted at in Calumet Park. Two people were injured, one critically.
JOHN GORMAN, STATE PROSECUTOR: They were seated inside their car, in which time both defendants approached their automobile. Both defendants were armed with firearms, raised their firearms and started to fired them at the victims as they sat inside their .
HALL: Calumet Park police say Gipson and Foreman fled the scene after the shooting. Officers tracked them down later that evening and brought them in for questioning. State prosecutors say a witness has identified both men in a police lineup. Police found one of the guns used in the shooting and a camera at the gas station captured everything on tape.
The arrest comes eight years after Romarr Gipson was wrongly accused in the brutal rape and murder of 11-year-old Ryan Harris. It was a case that grabbed national attention and outraged many. Gipson was just 7-years-old when he and 8-year-old became the youngest people ever charged with murder.
A month later, those charges were dropped. Convicted sex offender Floyd Durrs later pleaded guilty to the crime. In 2004, Gipson received a $2 million settlement from the city of Chicago, but he has been in and out of trouble. State prosecutors say he has two other juvenile charges pending against him, raising questions about the impact the wrongful accusations had on Gipson. Speaking in 1999, one of his attorneys predicted the damage would be immeasurable.
FLINT TAYLOR, ATTORNEY: The damage that this family and this young boy has suffered by the outrageous conduct of the Chicago police department is at this point incalculable.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Well Gipson and his older stepbrother Roman Foreman are due in court for a hearing July 6th.
A scary few moments at O'Hare Airport. An American Airlines jet from Los Angeles had trouble with its U.S. nose gear. The plane circled the airport, then make a safe landing. Rescue crews evacuated all 136 passengers and crew without any problems.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As we were coming in, they said the front nose landing gear wouldn't come down. They tried a few tactics to loosen it up, it didn't work. They prepared us for an emergency landing and evacuation. We landed and I have to say for what it's worth this landing this time was actually probably smoother than most regular landings I've ever had.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was pretty smooth. I mean, I'll admit, that for what it was, it was smooth. I am glad we are here and safe and everything is good.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're home, we're safe and that's all that matters.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Well that particular aircraft isn't capable of dumping fuel. But that wasn't an issue because the plane was already low on fuel by the time it arrived.
It looked just like a hostage situation, except for the film crew. Cops save the day but threw in the day, coming up on LIVE FROM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: After years of civil violence, militias and seemingly powerless government, well more than one million Sudanese, most of them women and children, are on the run. CNN's Nic Robertson takes us inside a refugee camp.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the camp that Jan Egeland's come to, Garita camp (ph), he says that the population here has doubled in the last six months.
Indeed he says in the last month or so, tens of thousands of internally displaced people, IDPs have been arriving. These people here arrived about 12 days ago. They have with them all their possessions, they're living -- if I can lift up their blanket here, quite literally under the tree.
The thorn tree and the blanket is their home and they have under here -- under the bed, all their possessions, a few pots, a kettle. And I talked to this lady a few minutes ago and I said do you have enough food for your family. She told me she had 10 children to care for. She said I'm going to give them porridge tonight, but we're really not getting enough food.
And if we go over here, as far as you can see in this direction, there new internally displaced people, the people forced out of a local village a few days ago have turned up. None of them have proper shelter. They're all living under trees, several families here camped out under this tree. They say they walked four days to get here. They don't have any materials for shelter, they say, they're just living out in the open.
Jan Egeland said he's got a real problem in this camp. Security isn't good enough to deliver food aid for these people. So when he talked to them and they said when are they going to get food, Jan Egeland told them he didn't know. Part of the problem, he says, is the international community has been asked for $1.5 billion for the whole of Sudan for the aid effort here. He said so far this year, they believe they've only received about half a billion dollars.
Jan Egeland also said that the security in this particular camp isn't good enough. He said the 150 African Union peacekeepers aren't enough to provide security for the 120,000 people. The ladies who we talked to over here a little while ago said just last night two people were killed not far away. The security, they say, is one of their biggest concerns. Food is one of their biggest concerns.
But Jan Egeland describes the situation here in the Gurita camp as bad as, if not worse, than when he visited here in 2004. Why? Because the security situation is worse. Why? Because they can't feed all the people that are showing up here.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Gurita Camp, Sudan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Half of all refugees, no matter the country, are children. They grow up, if they grow up at all, with more fear than food, more heartache than hope. Just imagine sitting out at sunset in search of a safe place to sleep. As our Africa correspondent Jeff Koinange discovered, it happens every night in northern Uganda.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's nighttime in Gulu in northern Uganda and the dusty roads leading into the town are busy with the patter of tiny feet rushing as if to beat the darkness. They are running from small villages far and wide, running from a man they've never seen, but they are running from real terrors in the night.
His name is Joseph Kony and he leads a violent rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, which claims to base its principles on the 10 Commandments. The LRA has forced more than 2 million civilians to flee their homes. And now, after 20 years on the run, Kony recently came out of hiding for the first time claiming he wants to talk peace with the Ugandan government.
JOSEPH KONY, LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY: I want peace.
KOINANGE: But until that happens, these children will continue to run.
(on camera): They wait for the sun to go down and every night, under the cover of darkness, these children, ages between five and 16 years old, make the long commute from their villages to the comfort of the big towns. In fact, locals here have coined a phrase for them. They call them the night commuters.
(voice-over): They arrive at one of several shelters in Gulu, exhausted but exhilarated. This one is appropriately named Noah's Ark. And like the biblical sanctuary, they enter in twos, escaping what they call the madness outside.
I asked the children how many of them know of someone who has been abducted? Almost every hand is raised. I asked them how many have family members who have been abducted? Just as many hands are raised.
But the center is both ill-equipped and underfunded. The only comfort the children get is a canvas roof, a cold, hard floor and, if they are lucky, a blanket. But all they are looking for, it seems, is a place to lie down without having to worry about becoming the next group of child slaves.
And in the morning, they are up early, ready to take the long walk back home to their villages. No breakfast. No shower. No change of clothes.
At a rehabilitation center for escapees not far from Noah's Ark, former kidnapped victims gather for a morning therapy session. Many of these girls bearing the physical scars of rape, and the boys the mental scars of torture.
Among them, 19-year-old Alice Abalo, who recently escaped from the LRA with her four-year-old daughter Nancy, a product of rape. Alice shows us the physical scars of her eight years in captivity -- bullet wounds on her leg, shrapnel scars on her chest.
ALICE ABALO, FORMER KIDNAP VICTIM (through translator): One day, the group we were in had just killed about six people and proceeded to decapitate them. Then I was asked to light a wood fire using the victims heads as support, the same way one would use three stones. I still have nightmares of their burning hair and brains oozing out of the burning heads. It was horrible.
KOINANGE: Florence Lakor is responsible for the twice a day counseling sessions for the escapees.
FLORENCE LAKOR, WORLD VISION, UGANDA: Their stories are really horrible. We have had cases of children who were ordered to -- to cook a human being. Said you cut the body into pieces and cook it up. Then they mobilize the village to come and eat the cooked body.
KOINANGE: Alice and the other kidnapped victims are allowed to stay here for 45 days. A brief period to adjust before going home. That is, if their home has survived the rebels.
As for the others who so far manage to evade the Lord's Resistance Army, the tiny feet of the night commuters remain on the move.
Jeff Koinange, CNN, Gulu in northern Uganda.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, regrets but no resignation from the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. John Fabrizi admits to using cocaine and abusing alcohol while in office, but he's not offering to step down. The tears and confession followed the inadvertent court filing of an FBI report, a report containing an alleged drug dealer's claim of a videotape showing Fabrizi using coke.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR JOHN FABRIZI, BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT: I thought that these were personal and private matters to me and my family, that I can deal with these issues with my family and myself. I now recognize my actions affected many others. And I want to apologize my family, my friends and all of the people of the city of Bridgeport for my actions, my past actions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Well, the mayor says he hasn't used drugs in 18 months or drunk alcohol in four months.
The cops yelled "freeze," the director yelled "cut," and likely the only shooting was done with a camera. Russell Haythorn of our Denver affiliate KMGH sets the scene. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EILEEN AGOSTA, DIRECTOR: This here, this is some of the -- the blood is actually from the night before when we were shooting that kind of rubbed off on the car.
RUSSELL HAYTHORN, KMGH REPORTER (voice-over): That's fake blood from a low-budget movie shoot.
CHRIS BORDEN, ACTOR: And in the actual scene, I basically have taken a hostage.
HAYTHORN: It was that scene, shot in this campground, that turned a staged movie shoot into a real life drama.
AGOSTA: It happened very suddenly after that. All of a sudden we hear "freeze."
BORDEN: Freeze, everybody freeze.
HAYTHORN: Actor Chris Borden and the cast and crew were shooting this feature called "Different Kinds," when 13 deputies and park rangers surrounded them, ordered them to ground and handcuffed them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We applaud them all for the discretion that they used.
HAYTHORN: Larimer County sheriff's deputies showed us the fake gun next to a real one. Deputies responded with rifles drawn and say the movie crew failed to alert authorities. Deputies say it was the crew's negligence that got them in trouble.
MAJ. JEFF SMITH, LARIMER CO. SHERIFF'S DEPT.: Certainly, it's not beyond belief or possibility that individuals do, these days, videotape crimes as they commit them, so having a video camera there didn't necessarily mean there was absolutely no threat.
AGOSTA: You know, I'm going to claim ignorance, on my part. I honestly thought that you could tell what we were doing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Well, because they didn't have a permit, the movie's director and lead actor both face disorderly conduct charges now.
The fat lady sang at Black Rock, and now for the first time in 44 years, Dan Rather is simply Dan Rather, not Dan Rather, CBS News. After weeks of speculation, Dan and the network confirmed today that Rather won't hang around for the last few months of his last CBS contract.
Rather was the anchor of the flagship "CBS Evening News" for more than half of his network tenure. He stepped down from that show in March after a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story containing dubious material about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard. In a statement Rather says, "My departure before the term of my contract represents CBS' final acknowledgement after a protracted struggle that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantial work there. As for their offers of a future with only an office but no assignments, it just isn't in me to sit around doing nothing." Rather says he's considering other possibilities.
Time now to check in with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. He's standing by in "THE SITUATION ROOM" to tell us what's coming up at the top of the hour. Hey, Wolf.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Kyra. Thanks very much.
A grisly discovery in Iraq, the bodies of two missing American soldiers believed to be found booby-trapped and mutilated. We will have the latest.
Plus, military muscle flexing -- the U.S. begins war games in the Pacific as concerns over North Korea.
Plus inside the war on terror. We will find out why Osama bin Laden allegedly backed President Bush for reelection. We will speak to the author of a new book, "The One Percent Doctrine."
Also Angelina Jolie on a mission -- she's raising world awareness of the plight of refugees and sharing some of the details on the birth of her baby. It's a CNN exclusive.
All that, Kyra, coming up right at the top of the hour.
PHILLIPS: Thanks, Wolf.
Ali Velshi with the "Closing Bell" as soon as we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: We're not sure if being really smart equals knowing when to come in from out of the rain, but rainy Seattle is apparently home to the smartest people in America. A study by BizJournals.com shows 47 percent of adults in Seattle have Bachelor's degrees, nearly double the U.S. average.
The city of Miami is ranked as the least brainy. Forty-seven percent adults there haven't graduated high school. The rankings, from U.S. Census data, are based on ability to innovate, create, compete, and make money. They also point out that workers with graduate degrees earn 167 percent more than people who only have a high school diploma.
Well, unexpected help for cops in Cedar City, Utah. It seems a couple of officers approached one Nicholas T. Galanis to ask about stolen property. Galanis got into his car and fled, but this is how it ended.
You see, Nick's dog was in the car, and didn't take kindly to the wild ride. He got so agitated he bit his owner in the face. After a stop at the hospital, Galanis was booked at the Iron County Jail. So much for man's best friend.
Signs of trouble in northern Indiana. Larry Shrock of Columbia City is accused by his neighbors of killing their dog and burning its body in an incinerator.
After Pam and Ron Castle posted that allegation on a homemade sign, well, Shrock put this sign up in reply, saying he shot the dog after it killed his rabbits and scared his grandchild. Well, the Castles then put up this sign, questioning Shrock's version of events. Police have been called but no charges have been filed.
Ali Velshi, I guess, you know.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know where that dude lived, but he didn't qualify as one of the smarter folk in America.
PHILLIPS: When you don't want to talk, you know, you just paint a sign.
VELSHI: I don't understand. Yes.
PHILLIPS: Let's see -- "Grandkid? That was not mentioned in the police report. No rabbits were harmed. Larry, you show my dog Jake and threw him in an incinerator, worth less low-life scum."
My goodness, what happened to like, the welcome wagon, and moving into the nice neighbors next door.
VELSHI: Yes, no kidding.
PHILLIPS: Bringing over the pie, asking for sugar. You know, the good old days.
VELSHI: Not working. How are you?
PHILLIPS: I'm doing OK. How are the markets doing? Anything exciting?
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