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CNN Live Today

Gridlock Grows; High-Speed Tragedy

Aired May 10, 2005 - 10:30   ET

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

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


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In suburban Philadelphia, firefighters trying to knock down the flames that have already collapsed the roof of this church. The fire broke out about 90 minutes ago. No injuries were reported. There have been no evacuations.
Does it seem like your commute is getting even longer? Are you stuck in traffic more often? A new study confirming your worse fears. The Texas Transportation Institute Annual Urban Mobility Report is just out. We are looking at a picture of, believe it or not, this is downtown Los Angeles, the 110, as it goes through downtown L.A. It's an urban-mobility report that we're looking at. It looks like plenty of mobility for L.A. right now. The study found gridlock is growing in dozens of U.S. cities.

Check out some of these sobering statistics. 2003, 3.7 billion hours of travel delay, also 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel. That's a loss of more than $63 billion in fuel costs alone.

Study coauthor Tim Lomax is joins us from College Station, Texas, where the commute isn't so bad, is it, Tim?

TIM LOMAX, TEXAS TRAFFIC INST.: No, ma'am. It's very nice.

KAGAN: Very good.

Let's look at the top-five cities. Let's go to your top list. Probably won't be a great surprise, L.A.. There you go. Even though that live picture before didn't look so bad. San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta, right here, and Houston, Texas, which is not that far from College Station.

LOMAX: That's correct.

KAGAN: I don't think this is going to be a surprise to that many people in town. Were you surprised to see these cities?

LOMAX: Not really. I think these have been cities near the top of the list for a lot of years.

KAGAN: And then hours delayed in rush hour, tell us why you used that your as your barometer to measure things.

LOMAX: I think it's a real easy measure for people to understand the amount of extra time that it takes them to move around at a peak.

KAGAN: When you look at previous years to this latest study, it's actually -- this latest study, things aren't so bad in some of those cities, but you say that doesn't mean things are actually getting better, it means the mess is spreading.

LOMAX: Well, I think the mess is spreading. Also the economy slowed down in 2003, the most recent year of you're data. I think that had an affect on slowing down the growth of congestion. It also had the effect of allowing some of the solutions to be more obvious, to be seen. If you're not trying to deal with 3 or 4 or 5 percent growth in traffic every day, every year, it's a lot easier for those solutions to have an effect.

KAGAN: What are some of those obvious solutions?

LOMAX: Well, I think we need to build more road and public- transportation capacity, particularly in many of those cities you mentioned are among the faster-growing cities in the country. If you're going to add a million or two more people, you need to add more capacity. You need to add more roads, more public transportation.

KAGAN: I was living in Phoenix in the '90s, and there was all this talk about, you know, we need to build highways, we need to build public transportation, and there was a big backlash, people saying, no, we don't want to be Los Angeles, and if you don't build it, they won't come.

LOMAX: I don't think that works. I think that if you don't build it and your city is a desirable place to be, I think people are going to come, and it's just a question of how you grow and how congested things become.

I think you also have to operate those facilities as officially as possible. You need to get the stalls and vehicle crashes out of the way. You need to get the signals to talk to each other so you get green lights more often than red lights. You need to operate the freeways in such a way that the traffic flows a little bit better so that you get the return from your investment on the freeways.

KAGAN: That's the big traffic-engineer picture. What if you're the person stuck behind the wheel everyday. Is there anything you can do behinds leave at 3:00 in the morning, as some of us do, to get to work?

LOMAX: Well, I think that's clearly what's happening in some places, is people are just reacting to the traffic congestion by travelling at different times. But I think you can also look into telecommuting or some sort of flexible work hours. Maybe you only have to go to work four days instead of five.

I think it's important to get the businesses, the employers, involved in this as well, because they're, in effect, the folks who are helping determine some of these commute patterns and some of the load on the traffic system.

KAGAN: Tim Lomax from the Texas Traffic Institute. I have to say for someone who studies traffic for a living, you are remarkably calm. That's a good thing.

LOMAX: Well, I'm here in College Station. KAGAN: That's true. It's a good thing.

Go Aggies. All right, thank you.

LOMAX: You're welcome.

KAGAN: Well, we're going to turn to another highway concern, high-speed chases. You see them sometimes here on CNN or perhaps other channels. You know what usually happens in the end, the suspect often gets caught, but have you thought about the pursuers? Their story doesn't always have that same type of ending.

Who else to do this story but our own Rick Sanchez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eighty miles per hour in a 55.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is the view from the other side, the view from inside a patrol car. The trooper has just spotted speeding driver. It's an instant adrenaline rush as the trooper takes pursuit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 252-238.

SANCHEZ: This driver stopped, but not all do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think he'll make it across this median. Well, he made it across.

SANCHEZ: In Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, just last week, this shirtless driver, a robbery suspect who police say has just attacked two women, runs from police in a stolen white pickup truck. He is seen drinking from a bottle...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been totally erratic as to what he's been doing.

SANCHEZ: ...gesturing wildly at a helicopter camera. It's a high-speed procession along the Sodgrass Expressway.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh!

SANCHEZ: He crosses the median, spins out several times, hits several cars. Finally, loses control and is taken down. This time no by-standers, no police, are seriously hurt, but the statistics are staggering.

According to the Highway Traffic Safety Administration, one person dies every day somewhere in the U.S. in a police pursuit, 375 people each and every year.

(on camera): Those are statistics, but there are people all over this country for whom this story cuts right to the core. In fact we found one such couple here in Georgia. For them, the story is not just a statistic. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He went to work one day and he didn't come back home, and I don't think they understand that till now. How do you? (INAUDIBLE) I don't understand it myself. How can they?

SANCHEZ: Sara Lumley (ph) is talking about the little girls her son has left behind. He was a Georgia state trooper whose patrol car rolled over and off the highway two years ago while chasing a felon, an armed robbery suspect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shots had been fired. He already eluded several different law enforcement officers. The trooper, Tony Lumley, motivated to do his job, intervened, attempted to stop this dangerous person and a tragedy came of it.

SANCHEZ: To learn more, we got in the car and took a ride with trooper Larry Schnal (ph) to get a better sense of how this can happen, to ask, when they chase, and when they don't.

Should you be approaching a school zone would you back off?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. You would terminate that pursuit. Any immediate risk to the public.

SANCHEZ: One of the best ways to stop a pursuit to use this. It's called a stop stick. Inside, underneath a cover, you find this plastic. Now, the plastic itself actually crumbles, but underneath the plastic there are jacks that create a puncture inside the tire of the person who's trying to get away. It's a puncture that create as slow leak. It does not create a blow-out, thereby not endangering the life either of the person who's driving the car, or people who may be around him at the time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As the pursuit is coming down the road, what we would do is quickly pull the device out, in a manner such as that so the suspect vehicle would strike it.

SANCHEZ: It's a maneuver that usually works, but when it doesn't, a much more dangerous high-speed technique must be used, one that requires nerves of steel and tons of skill. It is called a pit maneuver.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they spun him out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a maneuver in which we use our patrol car, slightly touching the violator's vehicle, spinning it out and disabling it.

SANCHEZ: Remember the Ft. Lauderdale chase? Police tried to stop that driver with that same maneuver. And, it's also the technique that trooper Lumley (ph) used the night he lost his life.

He was just doing his job, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. No idea that he would lose his life that night.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) Tony, with his two girls when they were smaller.

SANCHEZ: Pictures are all that Bill and Sara Lumley have left to remember their son, Tony, one, holding his baby daughter, another cutting up with his brother Tim, and the one his dad passes in the hallway every single day and night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every day. Every morning. Every night. Every time I go to the bathroom. It's there.

SANCHEZ: And you think of him?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes, yes.

SANCHEZ: And you wish you could...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bring him back.

SANCHEZ: You wish you could have him back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep. But knowing you can't.

SANCHEZ: The pain felt by a father who's lost his son, and by a mother.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think of him every day. I think some days it's just about all I can do to make it through the day.

SANCHEZ: Mrs. Lumley cried. Mr. Lumley cried, and so did we, as did thousands of officers from around the state when Tony Lumley was laid to rest, following another procession. This one more somber. This one more slow.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just like you're -- I don't know how to explain it. It's just like you are just suck into a hole and you are never coming out again, because what you love is gone.

SANCHEZ: Rick Sanchez, CNN, Derock (ph), Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Before we move on to this morning's Wall Street report, there are some wedding bells to announce. Actress Renee Zellweger and country music star Kenny Chesney have tied the knot in the Virgin Islands. The two met in January, raising money for tsunami relief. It's the first marriage for each. Congratulations to them.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: Other bride news -- this just in. The latest on the Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called runaway bride. CNN has learned that she has voluntarily entered what they're calling a medical treatment program. She did it on -- yesterday to receive treatment by -- that's been recommended by medical personnel. This information saying she entered a highly-regarded in-patient treatment program on her own volition to address physical and mental issues which she believes played a major role in, quote, "running from herself," as she described in her public statement last week. The location of the program will not be disclosed or the suggested duration of the program or treatment.

So once again, runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks going into what they're calling a voluntary medical treatment program to address physical and mental issues.

And with that, we're going to take a break. Much more news ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Crime, court, a celerity wedding that we were just mentioning, there are just some of the stories drawing curious surfers to our continually updated Web site.

CNN's Veronica De La Cruz joins us now from the dot-com desk.

Hi, Veronica.

VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Daryn.

Well, this morning, our users are in synch with CNN viewers. A lot of them are clicking on this story out of Zion, Illinois. Police have no leads in the case after finding these two little girls, Crystal Tobias and Laura Hobbs stabbed to death in an Illinois park.

Also receiving a lot of clicks at CNN.com, testimony in the Michael Jackson trial continues. Monday, a former security chief at the singer's ranch said she never saw Jackson exhibit any illegal or improper behavior toward young boys, but she also admitted that she couldn't get into the singer's bedroom unless someone inside let her in.

Finally, there is true love in Tinseltown, like we've all been mentioning. Users have been lock flocking to the Web to find out more about the marriage of Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney. Now the actress was once involved with singer Damien Rice, and then there was the lead singer of White Stripes, Jack White, who you're about to see right here. But it appears that no one has been able to sing a love song like country singer Kenny Chesney has. Now the two were married in the Virgin Islands last night after meeting in January at a tsunami-relief benefit.

To find the most popular stories, Daryn, you can go to our main page, click on the icon "most popular" on the right-hand side of your screen, or type in CNN.com/mostpopular. And those are just a few examples of what is hot on the Web right now.

Daryn, back to you.

KAGAN: Very good. I see the match. I can see Kenny and Renee together.

DE LA CRUZ: Yes, I think they're a cute couple. Great. Absolutely. Good for them. KAGAN: Congratulations.

Veronica, thank you.

DE LA CRUZ: Of course.

KAGAN: We're going to fake a look at stories making news coast to coast this morning. Police in Seminole County, Florida calling a home burglary about as low as you can go. A man accused of stealing money from children's piggy banks. Police say also took a Playstation console and video games. After several robberies, authorities say the homeowners set up a camera and was able to identify a former employee. Police are still out there looking for that man.

To Phoenix now, where a firefighter had a great stroke of luck, not once, but twice. Chris Hertzog had a winning Superfecta ticket in Saturday's Kentucky Derby, but he lost it. The woman who sold him the ticket found it. It was right by her machine. Hertzog's winning after taxes, a cool $605,000.

And luck turned for a California woman and one of her poodles. The woman was walking her dogs. One of them slipped, or jumped off a cliff. The fire department coming to the rescue. One firefighter helped get poodle down to a boat. The dog taken from nearby beach for a joyful reunion. Very good.

Let's check the time. 10:52 here in Atlanta, Georgia. 6:52 in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Stay with us. We're back with a check of your morning forecast.

Also, a special category on "Jeopardy" this week. You're going to hear Alex Trebek on the significance of CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: This week's CNN is on "Jeopardy." Each day the game show will have one category with the answers read by a CNN personality.

Monday's clues were read by CNN's Nancy Grace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX TREBEK, HOST, "JEOPARDY": Take a look.

NANCY GRACE, CNN ANCHOR: Hi. I'm Nancy Grace with CNN Headline News.

As a former Fulton County prosecutor, I went to the scene in this city to cover the deadly shootings in the same courtroom where I prosecuted felony cases.

TREBEK: Michael?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is Atlanta?

TREBEK: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CNN 16.

TREBEK: Take a look.

The Bay Area was hit by a quake whose aftermath is seen here named for the mountain near the epicenter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is Loma Preata (ph).

TREBEK: That's it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CNN for 400.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Now we'll never know what a CNN for 400 was. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek appeared on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING" just a little while ago. He talked about the idea behind CNN week on "Jeopardy."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TREBEK: "Jeopardy's" been on the air now 21 years. You guys have been on 25. And in two of our celebrity tournaments, our power player's week tournament that we have done in Washington D.C., we've had a number of your CNN cohorts as contestants on the program, and they have all done pretty well. So it was a natural combination for us to want to do this, to help you guys celebrate 25 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(WEATHER REPORT)

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Aired May 10, 2005 - 10:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In suburban Philadelphia, firefighters trying to knock down the flames that have already collapsed the roof of this church. The fire broke out about 90 minutes ago. No injuries were reported. There have been no evacuations.
Does it seem like your commute is getting even longer? Are you stuck in traffic more often? A new study confirming your worse fears. The Texas Transportation Institute Annual Urban Mobility Report is just out. We are looking at a picture of, believe it or not, this is downtown Los Angeles, the 110, as it goes through downtown L.A. It's an urban-mobility report that we're looking at. It looks like plenty of mobility for L.A. right now. The study found gridlock is growing in dozens of U.S. cities.

Check out some of these sobering statistics. 2003, 3.7 billion hours of travel delay, also 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel. That's a loss of more than $63 billion in fuel costs alone.

Study coauthor Tim Lomax is joins us from College Station, Texas, where the commute isn't so bad, is it, Tim?

TIM LOMAX, TEXAS TRAFFIC INST.: No, ma'am. It's very nice.

KAGAN: Very good.

Let's look at the top-five cities. Let's go to your top list. Probably won't be a great surprise, L.A.. There you go. Even though that live picture before didn't look so bad. San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta, right here, and Houston, Texas, which is not that far from College Station.

LOMAX: That's correct.

KAGAN: I don't think this is going to be a surprise to that many people in town. Were you surprised to see these cities?

LOMAX: Not really. I think these have been cities near the top of the list for a lot of years.

KAGAN: And then hours delayed in rush hour, tell us why you used that your as your barometer to measure things.

LOMAX: I think it's a real easy measure for people to understand the amount of extra time that it takes them to move around at a peak.

KAGAN: When you look at previous years to this latest study, it's actually -- this latest study, things aren't so bad in some of those cities, but you say that doesn't mean things are actually getting better, it means the mess is spreading.

LOMAX: Well, I think the mess is spreading. Also the economy slowed down in 2003, the most recent year of you're data. I think that had an affect on slowing down the growth of congestion. It also had the effect of allowing some of the solutions to be more obvious, to be seen. If you're not trying to deal with 3 or 4 or 5 percent growth in traffic every day, every year, it's a lot easier for those solutions to have an effect.

KAGAN: What are some of those obvious solutions?

LOMAX: Well, I think we need to build more road and public- transportation capacity, particularly in many of those cities you mentioned are among the faster-growing cities in the country. If you're going to add a million or two more people, you need to add more capacity. You need to add more roads, more public transportation.

KAGAN: I was living in Phoenix in the '90s, and there was all this talk about, you know, we need to build highways, we need to build public transportation, and there was a big backlash, people saying, no, we don't want to be Los Angeles, and if you don't build it, they won't come.

LOMAX: I don't think that works. I think that if you don't build it and your city is a desirable place to be, I think people are going to come, and it's just a question of how you grow and how congested things become.

I think you also have to operate those facilities as officially as possible. You need to get the stalls and vehicle crashes out of the way. You need to get the signals to talk to each other so you get green lights more often than red lights. You need to operate the freeways in such a way that the traffic flows a little bit better so that you get the return from your investment on the freeways.

KAGAN: That's the big traffic-engineer picture. What if you're the person stuck behind the wheel everyday. Is there anything you can do behinds leave at 3:00 in the morning, as some of us do, to get to work?

LOMAX: Well, I think that's clearly what's happening in some places, is people are just reacting to the traffic congestion by travelling at different times. But I think you can also look into telecommuting or some sort of flexible work hours. Maybe you only have to go to work four days instead of five.

I think it's important to get the businesses, the employers, involved in this as well, because they're, in effect, the folks who are helping determine some of these commute patterns and some of the load on the traffic system.

KAGAN: Tim Lomax from the Texas Traffic Institute. I have to say for someone who studies traffic for a living, you are remarkably calm. That's a good thing.

LOMAX: Well, I'm here in College Station. KAGAN: That's true. It's a good thing.

Go Aggies. All right, thank you.

LOMAX: You're welcome.

KAGAN: Well, we're going to turn to another highway concern, high-speed chases. You see them sometimes here on CNN or perhaps other channels. You know what usually happens in the end, the suspect often gets caught, but have you thought about the pursuers? Their story doesn't always have that same type of ending.

Who else to do this story but our own Rick Sanchez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eighty miles per hour in a 55.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is the view from the other side, the view from inside a patrol car. The trooper has just spotted speeding driver. It's an instant adrenaline rush as the trooper takes pursuit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 252-238.

SANCHEZ: This driver stopped, but not all do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think he'll make it across this median. Well, he made it across.

SANCHEZ: In Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, just last week, this shirtless driver, a robbery suspect who police say has just attacked two women, runs from police in a stolen white pickup truck. He is seen drinking from a bottle...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been totally erratic as to what he's been doing.

SANCHEZ: ...gesturing wildly at a helicopter camera. It's a high-speed procession along the Sodgrass Expressway.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh!

SANCHEZ: He crosses the median, spins out several times, hits several cars. Finally, loses control and is taken down. This time no by-standers, no police, are seriously hurt, but the statistics are staggering.

According to the Highway Traffic Safety Administration, one person dies every day somewhere in the U.S. in a police pursuit, 375 people each and every year.

(on camera): Those are statistics, but there are people all over this country for whom this story cuts right to the core. In fact we found one such couple here in Georgia. For them, the story is not just a statistic. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He went to work one day and he didn't come back home, and I don't think they understand that till now. How do you? (INAUDIBLE) I don't understand it myself. How can they?

SANCHEZ: Sara Lumley (ph) is talking about the little girls her son has left behind. He was a Georgia state trooper whose patrol car rolled over and off the highway two years ago while chasing a felon, an armed robbery suspect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shots had been fired. He already eluded several different law enforcement officers. The trooper, Tony Lumley, motivated to do his job, intervened, attempted to stop this dangerous person and a tragedy came of it.

SANCHEZ: To learn more, we got in the car and took a ride with trooper Larry Schnal (ph) to get a better sense of how this can happen, to ask, when they chase, and when they don't.

Should you be approaching a school zone would you back off?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. You would terminate that pursuit. Any immediate risk to the public.

SANCHEZ: One of the best ways to stop a pursuit to use this. It's called a stop stick. Inside, underneath a cover, you find this plastic. Now, the plastic itself actually crumbles, but underneath the plastic there are jacks that create a puncture inside the tire of the person who's trying to get away. It's a puncture that create as slow leak. It does not create a blow-out, thereby not endangering the life either of the person who's driving the car, or people who may be around him at the time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As the pursuit is coming down the road, what we would do is quickly pull the device out, in a manner such as that so the suspect vehicle would strike it.

SANCHEZ: It's a maneuver that usually works, but when it doesn't, a much more dangerous high-speed technique must be used, one that requires nerves of steel and tons of skill. It is called a pit maneuver.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they spun him out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a maneuver in which we use our patrol car, slightly touching the violator's vehicle, spinning it out and disabling it.

SANCHEZ: Remember the Ft. Lauderdale chase? Police tried to stop that driver with that same maneuver. And, it's also the technique that trooper Lumley (ph) used the night he lost his life.

He was just doing his job, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. No idea that he would lose his life that night.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) Tony, with his two girls when they were smaller.

SANCHEZ: Pictures are all that Bill and Sara Lumley have left to remember their son, Tony, one, holding his baby daughter, another cutting up with his brother Tim, and the one his dad passes in the hallway every single day and night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every day. Every morning. Every night. Every time I go to the bathroom. It's there.

SANCHEZ: And you think of him?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes, yes.

SANCHEZ: And you wish you could...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bring him back.

SANCHEZ: You wish you could have him back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yep. But knowing you can't.

SANCHEZ: The pain felt by a father who's lost his son, and by a mother.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think of him every day. I think some days it's just about all I can do to make it through the day.

SANCHEZ: Mrs. Lumley cried. Mr. Lumley cried, and so did we, as did thousands of officers from around the state when Tony Lumley was laid to rest, following another procession. This one more somber. This one more slow.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just like you're -- I don't know how to explain it. It's just like you are just suck into a hole and you are never coming out again, because what you love is gone.

SANCHEZ: Rick Sanchez, CNN, Derock (ph), Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Before we move on to this morning's Wall Street report, there are some wedding bells to announce. Actress Renee Zellweger and country music star Kenny Chesney have tied the knot in the Virgin Islands. The two met in January, raising money for tsunami relief. It's the first marriage for each. Congratulations to them.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: Other bride news -- this just in. The latest on the Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called runaway bride. CNN has learned that she has voluntarily entered what they're calling a medical treatment program. She did it on -- yesterday to receive treatment by -- that's been recommended by medical personnel. This information saying she entered a highly-regarded in-patient treatment program on her own volition to address physical and mental issues which she believes played a major role in, quote, "running from herself," as she described in her public statement last week. The location of the program will not be disclosed or the suggested duration of the program or treatment.

So once again, runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks going into what they're calling a voluntary medical treatment program to address physical and mental issues.

And with that, we're going to take a break. Much more news ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Crime, court, a celerity wedding that we were just mentioning, there are just some of the stories drawing curious surfers to our continually updated Web site.

CNN's Veronica De La Cruz joins us now from the dot-com desk.

Hi, Veronica.

VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Daryn.

Well, this morning, our users are in synch with CNN viewers. A lot of them are clicking on this story out of Zion, Illinois. Police have no leads in the case after finding these two little girls, Crystal Tobias and Laura Hobbs stabbed to death in an Illinois park.

Also receiving a lot of clicks at CNN.com, testimony in the Michael Jackson trial continues. Monday, a former security chief at the singer's ranch said she never saw Jackson exhibit any illegal or improper behavior toward young boys, but she also admitted that she couldn't get into the singer's bedroom unless someone inside let her in.

Finally, there is true love in Tinseltown, like we've all been mentioning. Users have been lock flocking to the Web to find out more about the marriage of Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney. Now the actress was once involved with singer Damien Rice, and then there was the lead singer of White Stripes, Jack White, who you're about to see right here. But it appears that no one has been able to sing a love song like country singer Kenny Chesney has. Now the two were married in the Virgin Islands last night after meeting in January at a tsunami-relief benefit.

To find the most popular stories, Daryn, you can go to our main page, click on the icon "most popular" on the right-hand side of your screen, or type in CNN.com/mostpopular. And those are just a few examples of what is hot on the Web right now.

Daryn, back to you.

KAGAN: Very good. I see the match. I can see Kenny and Renee together.

DE LA CRUZ: Yes, I think they're a cute couple. Great. Absolutely. Good for them. KAGAN: Congratulations.

Veronica, thank you.

DE LA CRUZ: Of course.

KAGAN: We're going to fake a look at stories making news coast to coast this morning. Police in Seminole County, Florida calling a home burglary about as low as you can go. A man accused of stealing money from children's piggy banks. Police say also took a Playstation console and video games. After several robberies, authorities say the homeowners set up a camera and was able to identify a former employee. Police are still out there looking for that man.

To Phoenix now, where a firefighter had a great stroke of luck, not once, but twice. Chris Hertzog had a winning Superfecta ticket in Saturday's Kentucky Derby, but he lost it. The woman who sold him the ticket found it. It was right by her machine. Hertzog's winning after taxes, a cool $605,000.

And luck turned for a California woman and one of her poodles. The woman was walking her dogs. One of them slipped, or jumped off a cliff. The fire department coming to the rescue. One firefighter helped get poodle down to a boat. The dog taken from nearby beach for a joyful reunion. Very good.

Let's check the time. 10:52 here in Atlanta, Georgia. 6:52 in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Stay with us. We're back with a check of your morning forecast.

Also, a special category on "Jeopardy" this week. You're going to hear Alex Trebek on the significance of CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: This week's CNN is on "Jeopardy." Each day the game show will have one category with the answers read by a CNN personality.

Monday's clues were read by CNN's Nancy Grace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX TREBEK, HOST, "JEOPARDY": Take a look.

NANCY GRACE, CNN ANCHOR: Hi. I'm Nancy Grace with CNN Headline News.

As a former Fulton County prosecutor, I went to the scene in this city to cover the deadly shootings in the same courtroom where I prosecuted felony cases.

TREBEK: Michael?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is Atlanta?

TREBEK: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CNN 16.

TREBEK: Take a look.

The Bay Area was hit by a quake whose aftermath is seen here named for the mountain near the epicenter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is Loma Preata (ph).

TREBEK: That's it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CNN for 400.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Now we'll never know what a CNN for 400 was. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek appeared on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING" just a little while ago. He talked about the idea behind CNN week on "Jeopardy."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TREBEK: "Jeopardy's" been on the air now 21 years. You guys have been on 25. And in two of our celebrity tournaments, our power player's week tournament that we have done in Washington D.C., we've had a number of your CNN cohorts as contestants on the program, and they have all done pretty well. So it was a natural combination for us to want to do this, to help you guys celebrate 25 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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