Return to Transcripts main page
Nancy Grace
Michigan Girl Disappears at Halloween Party
Aired November 03, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight, Newport, Michigan. Bombshell tonight. She goes to a Halloween costume party dressed as a
super-villain, Poison Ivy from "Batman." Amidst the other partygoers, she disappears, never seen again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty-two-year-old Chelsea Bruck went to a Halloween party with a group of friends.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Amid all of this, Chelsea had gone missing!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chelsea was dressed as the character Poison Ivy and had left her phone in a friend`s car.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The friend came out, got the phone. That friend never was able to find Chelsea again at the party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: And live, Tampa, Florida, a 10-year-old girl left paralyzed from the neck down after a routine flu shot vaccination.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mary Sue Braven (ph) contracted a rare illness that rendered her bedridden and mostly unable to speak.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It can be triggered by a virus with a high fever or by a (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her family believes it was the flu shot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us.
Bombshell tonight, Newport, Michigan. She goes to a Halloween costume party dressed as a super-villain, Poison Ivy from "Batman," but amidst the
other partygoers, she disappears, never seen again.
Straight out right now to Jason Scott on the story, joining us from WWJ. Jason, what do we know?
JASON SCOTT, NEWSRADIO 950 WWJ (via telephone): Well, we know very little right now. Hi, Nancy. Despite this being day seven of the search,
Chelsea`s sister, Kassandra, tells me that morale is still high within the search camp, but yet new information, very little at this moment. Recent
photos released by the family -- they`ve been examined by detectives, nine other partygoers in those pictures, they`ve been identified, still nothing
new on Chelsea`s whereabouts.
GRACE: Joining me right now, special guest, this is Chelsea`s sister, Kassandra Bruck. Kassandra, thank you so much for being with us. The
search has intensified, hundreds of volunteers out searching for your sister. Your sister, Chelsea, had never gone away before. She lives with
her parents, holds down a steady job, has never disappeared before. What are police telling you?
KASSANDRA BRUCK, SISTER (via telephone): Well, thank you. I appreciate being able to come on and speak about my sister. The police
actually came to our search command center yesterday to kind of look at what we`ve been doing with the search and to, you know, boost morale and
speak with my family. But just like, you know, we`ve been told and we`ve told every media outlet today, we still haven`t been told anything. There
is no new information to share.
GRACE: Right now, hundreds of volunteers every day showing up in the search for Chelsea. This is the problem. The party got totally out of
control. Let`s see video of the party. There were only a few hundred people that were supposed to come, but it got Facebooked and Twittered, and
the next thing you know, 500 to 700 people show up.
Now, look at this party. Liz, let`s hear the sound for a minute. Chelsea Bruck shows up, and amidst all of this -- think 500 people,
uninvited, really, at this party. She has on a Poison Ivy costume. Therefore, when people are seeing her as she really is, with long blond
hair, green eyes, they wouldn`t recognize her. They saw Poison Ivy. They didn`t see Chelsea as she really is.
And here`s the other part of that conundrum. If she left with someone, what were they dressed as? There`s no way we`re going to get a
positive ID if these two still had on part or all of their costume.
Kassandra Bruck is with us. This is Chelsea`s sister. You know, all weekend, I`ve been telling outlets and media and print that this young
girl, very sheltered, very innocent young girl. Her parents even drove her to her job every day. She has never gone away from home like this before.
She goes to the party with another friend, a girl. She leaves her cell phone in the friend`s car.
And it`s my understanding, Kassandra, that friend left and didn`t see Chelsea at the time she left. So she gives Chelsea`s cell phone to friend
number two. So Chelsea doesn`t even know where her cell phone is. When she looks around for friend number one and she`s already gone, if she can
even find her in 500 partygoers, Kassandra.
BRUCK: Yes, the girl that took her -- that drove her to the party had her cell phone and belongings, her ID, her wallet in the car. When she
left, she couldn`t find Chelsea, handed off the phone to another friend. That friend never found Chelsea. The phone never made it through the
entire night. And so Chelsea was at this party. She only knew a couple of people at this point in the evening, and she did not have her cell phone
with her.
GRACE: You know, that`s -- that`s bad, and I`ll tell you why, Kassandra, because so often, we can find people when they`ve got their cell
phone, especially an iPhone, a smartphone, because you can learn so much, tracking, GPS, you name it. It can find out where your phone is, and
without doing anything really special to find the phone, much less when police begin to ping if it`s still on. So the fact that she doesn`t have
her cell phone, it hurts the investigation.
But something you said, Kassandra. Everybody, with me is Chelsea`s sister. We`re all taking your calls in our effort to find Chelsea and
bring her home. Something you said really struck a chord in me, Kassandra, and that is, when friend number one, with whom she came to the party, left,
friend number one, the friend (ph) girl, looked around for Chelsea and couldn`t find her then.
Now, we know that that was one of the few people Chelsea knew at the party. So I imagine they were kind of sticking close together. It seems
to me that may be the beginning of a timeline, Kassandra, when friend number one left the party and she at that time could not find Chelsea.
That is significant.
What more do we know from the friend, Kassandra?
BRUCK: Well, we know that friend number two did look around for Chelsea to try and locate her. This girl herself needed a ride home, so
she was waiting on her ride to get come out and get her. That friend got there. They both looked around for Chelsea and couldn`t find her. They
assumed she had gotten a ride with someone else because she still might have known a couple people at the time.
So then they went home, and it wasn`t until the morning that all three of these young ladies discovered that, no, Chelsea never made it home,
never was able to get a rid and that we didn`t know where she was.
GRACE: Kassandra Bruck is with us. This is Chelsea`s big sister, her big sister. They`re what a lot of us Irish call Irish twins. She`s about
a little over a year older than Chelsea. Chelsea is the baby in her family. I think you said you`ve either got five or seven siblings and
Chelsea is the baby.
You know, Kassandra, it`s every mom`s worst nightmare for your daughter to go to a big party, which got bigger. In fact, they were trying
to turn people away. The guy that sponsored the party was trying to make people leave.
BRUCK: Yes.
GRACE: You go the party. You really don`t know that many people. She knew about a handful, maybe one or two other women, girls there. Then
you find out through a series of mishaps, she`s with nobody. She`s not with friend one, who left. She`s not with friend two, who now has her cell
phone. They leave with friend three.
What`s significant and helpful about this scenario is the timing. At the time friend one leaves, no Chelsea. And you know she looked hard to
find her. You don`t just leave your friend there. Then not long after, friend two decides to leave. She looks for Chelsea. So what that says to
me, Kassandra, Chelsea may very well have gone, been gone, or vanished, shortly after they got to that party.
BRUCK: Well, you could come to that conclusion. But there were reports -- we`ve spoken to people who knew her that still saw her there at
2:00 to 3:00. The timeline really gets fuzzy around the 2:00 to 3:00 hour of where she was, was she still at the party...
GRACE: And you know, another thing, Kassandra, are these photos and they may very well be time-stamped. So you`re telling me that`s really not
-- that`s a difficulty...
BRUCK: Yes.
GRACE: ... because even in the timeline I was constructing, even that`s wrong. So she was still there into the evening after these girls
left. Each one of the three girls, callers, thought Chelsea was with the other friend.
Kassandra, could you please tell our viewers about Chelsea? The more I hear about her -- she is a very sweet girl, never misses work, has never
been away from home overnight without her parents knowing about it, very loyal, the baby of the family. What more can you tell me about her,
Kassandra?
BRUCK: She -- I mean, you described her perfectly, very sweet, very loving. She loved us. She loved our family. She loved her friends --
extremely loyal to her friends and her family, happy and positive about life. She was very content with what she was doing and how she was living
her life.
She just -- she went to this party. It was a Halloween party and she went with other friends, thinking she`d be home in a couple hours. That`s
what she told my mother, that she wasn`t going to be gone long. She`d be back in a couple hours. And you know, something terrible has happened, and
it shouldn`t happen to this girl, my sister. It shouldn`t happen. It doesn`t happen.
GRACE: You know, Kassandra...
BRUCK: And that`s why we`re all very confused.
GRACE: I want to hear how your mom and dad are doing because, you know, parents love all their children, I believe, the same. But there`s
something about the baby. I think you want to hold onto the baby a little bit longer because you don`t want that childhood, that youth, to go away.
You want to have your baby with you. And from what I`ve been told, your parents just adore her, just love her so very much. How are your parents
doing?
BRUCK: They`re holding up. I mean, their relationship with my sister was similar to how you`ve described it, but also very understanding of
she`s an adult and she`s growing up, and she needs to, you know, experience and live. And you know, they had a combination of both, you know, loving
and protective, but also letting her, you know, explore her life.
And they -- they just love her so much. My mother is the traditional matriarch of the family, and she is currently what is holding this family
together. Her hope and prayer and faith has not wavered once since we (INAUDIBLE) since we realized she was gone, that we`re going to get her
back. She has not wavered in her (INAUDIBLE)
GRACE: What was their first reaction? What did they first believe when they -- when they found out that she did not come home from the party,
that she wasn`t at her friend`s house, what was their immediate reaction as to what they believed happened?
BRUCK: Oh, immediate reaction, she`s missing. It`s not a runaway. It`s not anything like that.
GRACE: Of course not.
BRUCK: Something bad has happened.
GRACE: Of course not.
BRUCK: She immediately filed a missing person`s report.
GRACE: Kassandra, if by chance Chelsea can hear our voices tonight, what is your message to your little sister?
BRUCK: To come home, to do everything she can to come home. I stand by it. She is not away by choice. If she has been taken, it is against
her will. She is not choosing this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do not think at all that this is her choice.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was last reportedly seen at a huge Halloween party held in this rural area.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hired 10 security guards and two parking attendants.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Investigators released this sketch of a man a witness saw heading to some parked cars with Chelsea.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was dressed as the Poison Ivy character from "Batman."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One clue may be finding the little leaves that were on her Halloween costume that night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Welcome back, everyone. We are searching for Chelsea. Here`s the problem. Chelsea goes to a Halloween costume party dressed as the
villain in "Batman," Poison Ivy. She doesn`t have red hair. She doesn`t look anything like that. You can hardly tell what color her eyes are in
her outfit. She`s very, very pale. She has green eyes, long blond hair, whitish blond hair, last seen in a Poison Ivy getup, complete with a vial
of poison.
And we`re trying to piece together a timeline tonight. She did not have her cell phone with her. She took it to the party, for whatever
reason, left it in the car of her friend with whom she drove to the party. The friend -- another girl drove her to the party.
They go into the party. The party got totally out of control. There were supposed to be about 200 people there. By the time it was Facebooked
and Twittered, 500 to 700 people show up at this party, the guy who sponsored the party turning people away. The music was loud. There were
500, at least, people there.
From what we are learning tonight, Chelsea was last seen sitting alone near a little group of people. She was sitting down by herself. She only
knew one or two people at the party. And she was sitting there. During all of this, friend number one decides to leave and go home. She couldn`t
find Chelsea. So she passed off her cell phone to friend number two. When friend number two gets ready to go home, hitching a ride with friend three,
she can`t find Chelsea, either.
Chelsea last seen, again, sitting alone near a group of people. Before she was spotted, this guy talking to her. He had on a hoodie. He
had on some facial hair. He had on dark hair. Do we know if that`s what he really looked like? No! He was in costume, as well.
We are taking your calls. Out to the lines. Hi, Lisa. What`s your question?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Nancy. Can I say first, please, I hope she`s eventually found alive and safe.
GRACE: Of course.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My question is that, or my thought, actually -- could it be that someone from the party snatched her and is unfortunately
harming her in some way?
GRACE: That`s my fear. That`s my fear tonight, Lisa.
Joining me, in addition to Chelsea`s sister, Kassandra, with us tonight, James Gemmell, news director, WJRW. James, thank you for being
with us.
JAMES GEMMELL, NEWSTALK 1340 WJRW (via telephone): Yes.
GRACE: Tell me about the search, and what are the police theories right now?
GEMMELL: Well, there`s a lot of theories being bandied about, Nancy. Human trafficking is one possibility. Michigan is big when it comes to
that. And of course, you know, you released a bit of information about a couple of people who may have been in Halloween costumes. I know that
there were security guards out there.
They were trying to locate a couple of those people dressed in orange shirts who supposedly were not suspects. However, they did come up with a
bit of a mockup, a composite sketch of a young man with some stubble on his chin. He was said to be white with a medium build, medium-length dark
hair, thin mustache, and was wearing dark-framed glasses and a black hooded sweatshirt at the time. So that`s a description of him.
GRACE: Hold on, James. Everybody, James Gemmell with us, WJRW. James, but we don`t even know if that facial hair and that mustache is
real. We don`t know if he`s really got dark hair. We don`t know if these are really glasses or part of a costume.
GEMMELL: That`s part of the conundrum, that and the fact that this party that this gentleman hosts every year, Mike Williams (ph), usually
expects about 500 to show up, and as you said earlier, more than 800 showed up. And people couldn`t even contact their friends there. They --
everybody was losing track of everybody. That was the added problem. With a party that size, it`s normally a little chaotic anyway. Then you add in
the factor that people were decked out in Halloween costumes, it`s going to make the investigation difficult.
GRACE: Oh, it`s a nightmare. It is a nightmare, James Gemmell. To think of your daughter lost -- I had 700 people, but you`re telling me 800
amidst a party with this screaming loud music. She hardly knew anybody there -- 800 people. Everybody in Halloween costumes.
Everybody, we are taking your calls. Jason Scott, two things that Gemmell just said really jumped out at me. One, the part that Michigan has
a human trafficking problem. And two, trying to track down so-called security guards. Who were they?
SCOTT: Well, they -- apparently hired for the party, the massive, elaborate party. And to think that they`re security guards and they can`t
get anything out of the security guards -- the detectives, that is -- to get anything out of them when it comes to, say, this case. And as we talk
about the location and -- in Monroe County, south of Detroit, a very rural area where the party took place. I don`t know if it`s for the better or
for the worse. But we`re searching cornfields, creeks. You know, it`s like a wooded area. It`s all over the place. And they`re combing --
they`re combing it to the best of their ability, the family, friends, authority. It just makes it that much harder or easier, if it`s...
GRACE: Well, something you said about the security guards, that you can`t get anything out of them. The security guards are not named as
suspects or persons of interest. Jason, what do you mean you can`t get anything out of them?
SCOTT: Out of them, out of -- well, the police -- rather, detectives have identified those security guards. They haven`t released that
information. But they have not gotten anything new out of them when it comes to the case, where people have come forward to say that they are,
yes, at that party.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She had on black yoga pants, a leaf-covered top and a dark purple wig covering her blond hair.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Family and friends of Chelsea Bruck aren`t thinking the worst. They`re working shifts, walking neighboring streets
and knocking on doors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She needs to know that we love her, that we miss her, and we just want her to come home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Everyone, with me tonight, Chelsea`s sister making a plea on behalf of her family to bring Chelsea home. It`s a parent`s worst
nightmare. Their daughter goes to a party that grows like wildfire by leaps and bounds. Supposed to be a couple hundred people, comes out to be
800. There`s screamingly loud music by this group right here.
She doesn`t know very many people. She`s last seen sitting down by herself close to a little knot of people, last seen talking to some white
male medium build. That doesn`t really help me that much, but that`s all we`ve got. Where is Chelsea? To top it all off, she`s dressed like Poison
Ivy, so people at the party aren`t even going to be table to identify her.
Also, we learn -- to Kassandra Bruck. This is Chelsea`s sister. There are searches going on by air, by land, by foot, where hundreds of
volunteers are coming out, and they`re going through cornfields.
This weekend, I took my twins to a corn maze. And when you`re out in it, it can be 14 feet high. You can`t see a thing. What do we know about
the searches, Kassandra?
BRUCK: Well, one other thing to know, we were raised on a farm, me and my sisters. My father owns a 200-acre farm. So we`ve been in
cornfields and farm land our entire life. And the majority of our search is (INAUDIBLE) is farmers, it`s country people that have been around this
terrain. So I think we`re definitely using that to our advantage.
When we have volunteers come out, we ask them first, Where are you from? What are you familiar with? We don`t want to lose any searchers.
We don`t want to confuse them or have another tragedy on our hands. So we make sure we ask them, you know, what -- What are you familiar with? What
are you comfortable with? And then, if they`re from around here, we ask them please go back to your property and search your property, have your --
you know, your neighbors search their property so we can cross it off the list.
GRACE: Well, right, because they`ll be familiar. And that`s a huge swath of land for farmers to search their own property and their cartilage,
their outbuildings that only they may know about.
Everybody, we are searching desperately to help bring Chelsea home. She disappeared at a Halloween party, everybody in full costume.
Another thing. To Marc Klaas joining me, president, founder of Klaas Kids Foundation. The fact that police are saying we can`t get anything out
of these security guards. But think about it, if there`s four security guards and 800 people, there may be nothing to get out of the security
guards.
KLAAS: That`s absolutely correct, Nancy. I think what they may be able to get something out of are those photographs. If you have 500 or 800
people at a party and they have cell phone cameras, you`re liable to have thousands if not tens of thousands of photographs. In one of those
photographs may lie the key to what happened and who that individual was that she was last seen with.
GRACE: You know, Marc Klaas, we just showed a photo and we are showing video right now. That has been taken we believe off cell phones.
The shot of security guards who P.S., are not suspects. Information is, they`re not getting anything out of them. They may not know anything.
This party ballooned to 800 people. But what Klaas just said, these are cell phone photos. Somebody may very well have a photo of Chelsea and who
she is with. She did not wander off on her own, Kassandra. I`m with you on that. She would know better than to wander out at that time of the
night by herself in that temperature. She would never have done that, Kassandra.
BRUCK: Yes, I agree. She wouldn`t have. There`s no evidence. There`s no history to that. There`s no history of her walking home or
walking out on her own.
Yes, I would agree with that.
GRACE: Another thing I`m wondering about, out to James Gemmell, WJRW. James, is there any place people can send their cell phone photos? Out of
800 people, it`s very likely she`s in one of those photos. If this guy is talking to her, it`s very possible she`s in a photo.
GEMMELL: Yes, indeed. The help find Chelsea Bruck Facebook page. Help find Chelsea Bruck Facebook page, and also by the way, a trust has
been set up at the Monroe Bank and Trust there in Newport in Monroe County. I understand more than $2,000 has been raised so far to help with this
volunteer search. I understand more than 3,000 people participated in the search so far.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: And now live to Tampa, Florida, a 10-year-old little girl left paralyzed from the neck down after a routine flu shot vaccination.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So how did an otherwise healthy 10-year-old suddenly become so paralyzed that her father now has to carry her around?
Her family believes it was the flu shot.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It can be triggered by a virus with a high fever or by a vaccination.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It can just appear out of the blue or after maybe a surgical procedure, and it`s otherwise unexplainable.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But Mary Sue`s mother says she`s never getting the flu shot again.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love my daughter. I`ll do anything in the world. It broke my heart when this happened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Okay. I am devastated hearing this. Straight out to Meredith Censullo, investigative reporter there on the scene. Meredith, millions of
people are taking the flu shot. No. 1, was this the flu shot or the mist?
CENSULLO: What we understand that here in Tampa, Florida, little Mary Sue did get a routine flu shot, and then just three days later was found
paralyzed and unresponsive by her parents.
GRACE: Okay. Meredith, what more do we know? Because this child, seemingly was healthy. In fact, the night before she was found paralyzed
in her bed, she didn`t pop out of bed at 6:00 a.m. like she normally does every morning. Her mom goes in. She cannot move from the neck down.
Wasn`t she out playing in the yard the night before?
CENSULLO: Yes, she was out playing freeze tag just like a lot of little 9- and 10-year-old kids like to do out in the neighborhood.
Playing with her friends. That was something she really liked to do. She loved school. She loved running. She loved playing the handbells in
church. Now she can`t do anything any of that. The little girl is bedridden.
GRACE: With me right now is a special guest. The child`s mother, Carla Grivna is with us. Ma`am, thank you so much for being with us.
CARLA GRIVNA, MOTHER: Nancy, I would like to say thank you very much for bringing Mary Sue`s story to everyone.
GRACE: You know, Ms. Grivna, I`m actually embarrassed that you thanked me. I appreciate it. But tell me what happened. I want to find
out, what, if anything we can do to help you. It`s just so hard for me to take in what has happened to Mary Sue.
GRIVNA: Mary Sue has always been the most wonderful child anybody would want to know. She loves school. She would have gone to school every
day of the year if we had been able to let her, if the school was open. Christmas break she hated. She loved her church. She was raised in the
church. We run a breakfast ministry. We serve breakfast at our church. Mary Sue was part of that. Right now, what we`re doing for Mary Sue is we
set up a Gofundme account. (inaudible), because we need to add a room. Mary Sue is confined to a custom wheelchair at this point, and has to sleep
in a hospital bed. And our home is a small home. And it`s not accessible to her wheelchair. She gets to the front door and she`s confined to the
living room.
My husband Steven has to physically lift her out of the bed, carry her down the the hall to put her in the shower each night. And so we`re
raising funds to build a room for her so we can have a roll-in shower.
(CROSSTALK)
GRACE: If you could flash that Gofundme information back on the screen. Miss Grivna, what happened the day you found her paralyzed in her
bed?
GRIVNA: Mary Sue would normally get up around 6:00, 6:30 in the morning and come say good morning to us in our room. She did not get up.
I woke up at 7:15. I looked at the time. I`m like, Mary Sue hasn`t been in. I went into her room and tried to rouse her. First, she wouldn`t
rouse. Then she just looked at me. She was at that point, she was stiff as a board. And she said -- she couldn`t say anything. She just opened
her eyes and looked at me. And the look was like, help me.
I immediately yelled for my husband and grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. We were later told that she had had a seizure, lack of oxygen.
And then later, a day or two, couple days later, they did an MRI of her brain, and we were told she had lesions on her brain, which gave us a
diagnosis of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, ADEM, or otherwise known as white brain disease.
GRACE: Lesions on her brain. How did all this happen? She was playing freeze tag in the front yard the night before.
GRIVNA: It was a reaction to the flu. Everybody feels that it was ADEM -- when you research ADEM on the Internet as I have spent -- my
husband and I and our whole extended family has, one of the -- one of the causes of ADEM is a reaction to a vaccination. Mary Sue, this was Tuesday
morning, before Thanksgiving that we found her. Mary Sue, the Friday before, had had her annual flu shot. As she had had every year. It was a
normal occurrence in our household for her to get this.
Afterwards, Saturday, Sunday, perfectly normal self. Monday, perfectly normal. Tuesday, we go to get her up, and she totally changed.
I went from having an active 9-year-old to basically having a newborn again. And after when she was no longer stiff, after I saw her at the
hospital when I finally got to see her at ICU later that day, she had no arm movement. She couldn`t move her arms independently. You could move
them. She couldn`t move her head on her own. She had no control of her head.
GRACE: Is she still bedridden?
GRIVNA: She is wheelchair and hospital bedridden. She gets in her wheelchair. She goes to a medical day care during the day. It`s staffed
by a great group of RNs who just love the children.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: A seemingly completely healthy little girl playing freeze tag in the front yard. Mom wakes her up the next morning. She is paralyzed
from the neck down. This after just getting the flu shot vaccine. With me, her mother, Carla Grivna. Carla, why do you believe this is because of
the flu shot?
GRIVNA: Because there was nothing else in any -- no other life changing events, or no other medications out of the ordinary given. It had
been the only thing that had been given to her or happened to her during the time period. And extensive testing was done at the hospital to try to
find another cause, and none was able to be found.
GRACE: With me now, Dr. Amy Edwards, infectious disease specialist. Dr. Edwards, weigh in.
DR. AMY EDWARDS: Well, the condition that Mary Sue has is called ADEM. And it`s a known but rare condition of childhood that we see
primarily after infections. We know, for instance, that the measles can cause ADEM, the flu -- actually getting influenza. And there`s a variety
of infections that have been linked with ADEM. But we don`t yet know what the exact -- like the exact trigger is. It`s not really clear yet.
GRACE: And Dr. Amy Edwards, it also can occur after a vaccination. Is that correct?
EDWARDS: It seems to be correct, although we`re not 100 percent sure. So about 5 percent of ADEM cases have a temporal, like a time association
with vaccines. But it`s not clear whether that`s just because kids get vaccines and they get ADEM and those just happen to happen at the same
time, or if a vaccine can be a trigger for ADEM.
GRACE: Well, what`s interesting is that the mom says that she had not had any of those just before this happened. Measles, mumps. Any of that.
What she had was the flu vaccine.
EDWARDS: Right. And it can be -- there are about 5 percent of cases that we have that seem to have that association with vaccines. The problem
is what we`re talking about is so, so uncommon that we -- it`s hard to do research on something that is this uncommon. So we`re not 100 percent sure
what the link is.
What we do know is it seems to be the body itself. So when the immune system is faced with a virus or a vaccine, it produces something called
antibodies, and it seems to be these antibodies that attack the brain and cause ADEM.
GRACE: With me also, Becky Estepp, director of communications at Health Choice. Becky, thank you for being with us. I want to hear your
opinion on this.
BECKY ESTEPP, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, HEALTH CHOICE: Well, Nancy, thank you for taking time to really cover this very important story. I
feel that Mary Sue should not have been collateral damage in the war against the flu. I know the flu can be bad for some people, but in 10-
year-old girls, it`s not really. And I appreciate what the doctor is saying, but the child was vaccinated, and there hasn`t been research,
that`s so true. I wish that she and other doctors would go to the vaccine injury compensation program and look at the people that have been
compensated for ADEM and for the flu shot. So far we have 800 compensated cases.
GRACE: Hold on, Becky, Becky. I mean, I`ve got a J.D. and I`m not altogether sure what you`re saying. I think what you`re saying is that
there is a link between the flu shot and Mary Sue`s illness? What exactly -- put it in plain terms.
ESTEPP: Oh, sure. I`m sorry. We have a vaccine injury compensation program here in the United States, because parents cannot sue a vaccine
manufacturer for injury due to any vaccines. No one can. But what you have to do is petition the government.
GRACE: Wait, wait, wait. Becky, hold on. You just told me something I did not know. Unleash the lawyers. Diana Aizman, David Benowitz, did
you hear what Estepp said? If you child or you get the vaccine and you end up paralyzed like this little girl, Mary Sue, you can`t sue the
manufacturer, Diana, why?
AIZMAN: Because they don`t want to discourage people -- they do not want to discourage vaccine companies from making vaccines. Obviously
they`re very important from a public health perspective, and they don`t want to discourage the vaccine manufacturers, the drug companies from
making these vaccines that overall have a benefit for the government -- or the public.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: A seemingly perfectly healthy young girl gets the flu shot, then is left paralyzed. Is there a connection? David Benowitz, is it
true, is she correct? I`m afraid she is, you can`t sue the pharmaceutical company that creates the vaccine when your child is left paralyzed?
BENOWITZ: That is true. Our government has made a policy choice that we want as a society these vaccines to be made in huge quantities and we
don`t want the drug companies to be facing these lawsuits if something goes wrong. So these funds are set up to compensate people.
GRACE: You know, Patricia Saunders, I heard one of the experts say she`s a 10-year-old girl, did she need a flu shot. I get bombarded every
which way for everybody to get a flu shot. What is the mom supposed to feel after hearing that? You should not have gotten the flu shot?
Everybody tells us to get a flu shot.
SAUNDERS: Generally, it`s a good thing, because there`s a correlation of 5 percent, it doesn`t mean that it`s causative. So if you look at the
overall numbers, it`s safer to have your child vaccinated, unless they have some risk factors.
GRACE: But Carla Grivna, your girl, Mary Sue, you have told us, seemed perfectly healthy. She didn`t just have the measles, she didn`t
just have the mumps. She was perfectly healthy according to you.
GRIVNA: That is correct. And through my research and trying to figure all this out and living it with for almost a year now, we have found
out they don`t know what triggers this. It`s unknown.
And, Nancy, I did some research into this year`s shot. There`s like 156,000 doses that will have four viruses in it, as last year`s did. And
that`s 45 to 50 percent of the flu shots that are going to be given this year.
GRACE: Okay. You know what? I am not a kook that is afraid of vaccinations. I did insist that they be spaced out. It took me years to
get my children vaccinated. But this is scary. Everyone, for information on this, go to gofundme.com/g5lbzg.
Let`s remember American hero, Army First Lieutenant Laura Walker, 24, Texas. Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal. A West Point
grad, loved singing, riding, runs with her father, cooking with mom. Parents Valerie and Keith, one sister, two brothers. Laura Walker,
American hero. And happy 14th to Arlington, who loves piano and martial arts and is a member of Future Business Leaders of America.
Drew up next. I`ll see you tomorrow night at 8:00 sharp Eastern. Until then, good night, friend.
END
