Tiger Attack; Beauty Queen Indicted
ROBERTS: Some of the best shots in the morning in our "Quick Hits" coming to you now. Lava, ash and smoke south of Santiago, Chile. The Llaima Volcano sent a column of smoke close to 10,000 feet up into the air. One hundred fifty people were evacuated, and even though there was an awful lot going up and a lot coming down, no one was hurt. Roses were dodger blue at the Rose Bowl Parade. This float celebrating America's past time was one of 50 that have to be made of all organic material including millions of flowers. It was a picture- perfect day for the 119th parade in Pasadena, despite the threat from the Santa Ana winds. And push. A car stuck in a ditch after a monster snowfall in southeastern Michigan. The New Year storm dumped more than a foot there before it moved across the lake to upstate New York and New England. Now let's head back up to New York and here's Kiran.</s>CHETRY: Wow. That does not look like fun. God bless them. Hopefully they got that car out. Well, new this morning. We're hearing from the survivors of the tiger attack at the San Francisco zoo. Their lawyer says the zoo ignored their cries for help. Defense attorney Mark Geragos is now representing Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal, the two who were injured but did not get killed by that tiger. The "San Francisco Chronicle" is saying the zoo didn't call police until 37 minutes after the tiger attack and killed Carlos Sousa, Jr. According to Geragos, he's also saying that the security guard shrugged the brothers off even though one was bleeding. The "New York Post" is reporting, though, that the brothers had a slingshot with them at the zoo and that an empty vodka bottle was found in the brother's car. Geragos, their lawyer, Geragos is denying the claim about the sling shot but Sousa's father, the father of the young boy who died, says he wants to talk to the two.</s>CARLOS SOUSA, SR., FATHER OF VICTIM: I want to ask them, did you do this? Did you do that? What happened? I've been hearing all this stuff on the media. I mean, I want to know the facts. I simply want to know what's going on. I want to know. That's my son. That's -- that's my life, you know.</s>CHETRY: By the way, the zoo is set to reopen tomorrow. The tiger and lions exhibit is remaining closed to the public. Our legal analyst Sunny Hostin has been covering this for us, weighing in as we go along, and it seems like every day we hear something new.</s>SUNNY HOSTIN, AMERICAN MORNING LEGAL ANALYST: That's right.</s>CHETRY: Although these latest accusations coming from Geragos about the fact that perhaps the zoo did not take the brothers seriously...</s>HOSTIN: Right.</s>CHETRY: ... seems to be backed up by some of those 911 tapes where it appears that the dispatchers thought they were lying or crazy, they said.</s>HOSTIN: Absolutely.</s>CHETRY: Or mentally --</s>HOSTIN: Mentally unstable. And Kiran, the investigation is still ongoing here and we know that, but we've been hearing this from the very beginning. What we've been hearing is that the wall, the tiger enclosure wall, was not high enough. The recommended height was 16.4 feet. It's 12 1/2 feet. It was four feet well, you know, below the recommended minimum for a U.S. zoo. We also know that the tiger had mauled a zookeeper a year before. There were no surveillance cameras. The response was completely inadequate here. They locked the police out. We're talking about a zoo employee that ignored a man who was bleeding from the head. This is for me again a slam dunk in terms of the suit that is going to come. And --</s>CHETRY: Even if, as it turns out, as we said, there is some sourcing about this from "The New York Post" that there is a slingshot found.</s>HOSTIN: Yes.</s>CHETRY: If these --</s>HOSTIN: It doesn't matter.</s>CHETRY: If they taunted the tiger...</s>HOSTIN: Yes.</s>CHETRY: ... let's say and were drinking, is any of that contribute to their culpability?</s>HOSTIN: It is, and we know that's why the zoo is going to be playing the blame game here. It's about contributory negligence so a judge or a jury is going to have to balance who was more negligent, the zoo or the brothers? So let's say they had the slingshot and they were drunk and they were taunting the tiger. Had the fence been as high as it was supposed to have been, maybe we wouldn't have a dead teenager and two, you know, severely injured teenagers. So the bottom line is, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't, but really, who cares? The zoo is going to be found negligent here. We know that the response was inadequate. They have a real problem.</s>CHETRY: You know, there's another interesting case this morning. It's an Arizona beauty queen. She's also a law clerk to a federal judge.</s>HOSTIN: Yes.</s>CHETRY: In some hot water now accused of kidnapping and torturing her ex-boyfriend. Her attorney says the victim is not innocent, has a record of his own, but this case just seems a little bit strange.</s>HOSTIN: You know it's difficult to explain crazy and you see it all the time, but we have someone that's a law student and a law clerk to a federal judge, and that judge was a former prosecutor and so her law career, as far as I'm concerned, is sort of over before it even began. We've got a picture of her, and the viewers can see it. She's holding a gun. She's sort of a pin-up girl. Her judgment clearly is off. She's never going to be a prosecutor, not certainly a federal or state prosecutor.</s>CHETRY: Yes. This one -- her name is Kumari Fulbright and she actually won. She was part of a Miss Arizona pageant.</s>HOSTIN: Yes.</s>CHETRY: And a second year law student at the University of Arizona.</s>HOSTIN: That's right.</s>CHETRY: But what she's accused of -- tying up this guy along with some other people.</s>HOSTIN: It's just unbelievable. She's accused of armed robbery, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, two counts of that assault. She apparently tied up her boyfriend. She also bit him. She apparently stuck a butcher knife in his ear, pointed a gun at him, threatened to kill him. I mean, there are boyfriends that you want to do that to, but you don't do it. Resist the temptation, even though you want to do it. And the bottom line is, you know, she's a trained law student. By your second year, you know what a crime is. It's phenomenal. I think it's a story we should follow but again, you can't explain crazy.</s>CHETRY: That's right but as you said --</s>HOSTIN: It's fatal attraction.</s>CHETRY: Yes. And even if she's cleared, though, when you're in a position like that, it's hard to get your reputation back.</s>HOSTIN: She's been arrested. Yes, her judgment is off.</s>CHETRY: Sunny Hostin, good to see you as always. Thanks.</s>HOSTIN: Good to see you, Kiran.</s>CHETRY: John?</s>ROBERTS: You know, you might have a sense that something like that would be a crime in the second grade, let alone second year of law school. Hey, the strongest thing that we've got going this morning is a good cup of coffee, but do you need a hit of testosterone? Paging Dr. Sanjay Gupta about the risks and rewards associated with testosterone therapy. And from the kitchen this morning at the Hamburg No. 2 Inn, the Hamburg Inn No. 2 Diner, the long and strange name here, they're getting folks fed this morning here in Iowa City, preparing for the caucuses tomorrow. What are people thinking about? Who do they want to vote for? What do they want to hear from the candidates? All of that coming up here on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING live from Iowa City. We'll be right back.