on this episode of death row stories, a baby arrives at a hospital, dead on arrival. >> this was more than just a baby that quit breathing. >> and a teenage mother is sentenced to death. >> when a baby dies, people want to hold somebody accountable. >> but when a defense team raises doubts of guilt -- >> my impressions of the first trial is it was pretty much of a farce. >> -- the prosecution pushes for an execution. >> putting someone on death row, that's a terrible, egregious mistake. >> he said, i sentence you to die, and may god have mercy on your soul. there's a body in the water. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their

innocence. >> in this case, there are a number of things that stink. >> this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay for it with his life. >> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs. let the truth fall where it may. columbus, mississippi, has always been a little closed town. if you weren't born and raised here and lived in one of the antebellum homes, you didn't belong. >> it was kind of a typical southern town that's not a real bad town, but a place where things played out in some instances along racial lines. >> on april 11th, 1989, it was a quiet night at columbus hospital. nurse peggy agent was on duty when shortly after midnight,

18-year-old sabrina butler showed up cradling her 9-month-old baby. >> sabrina came running in, screaming, my baby's not breathing. my baby's not breathing. the nurses all ran out into the waiting room, and we took the baby to the back and started working on it. and when the pediatrician got there, he was going to intubate the baby, and he could not get the head stretched back. we began to think, hey, he's been dead for some time. >> after attempting resuscitation for 30 minutes, walter butler jr. was declared dead. nurse peggy began claeaning the infant's body. >> there was a mark across its chest, and it had a look like a zipper or something had made an impression on it. i was changing the baby's diaper, and as i turned it over, i saw that the rectum did not look right. so when i asked the doctor what

that was, he said that's pro-lapsed rectum. that's where part of the large intestine has started to come out of the baby. >> because of walter's suspicious symptoms, columbus police were called to investigate. detective keith worsham was among the officers who arrived on the scene. >> before i got to the hospital, all i knew was there was a dead baby at the hospital. when i walked in, i talked to the officer that was working the case. they were suspicious of what had happened to the child. >> i was standing off to the side, and as the detective started questioning sabrina, i would look over. and if anybody was looking at her, she was all tears and, oh, making crying sounds and everything. but if everybody looked away, she was looking up to see if anybody was looking at her. and the minute anybody would look at her, she would start to

cry again. >> under questioning, sa bree ma claimed she had left walter jr. with a babysitter and gone jogging for an hour. >> i said, well, where did you jog for an hour? and she said, around the block. and i said, you spent an hour going around the block? around and around? and she said, yes. >> sabrina told police that when she returned home, the babysitter said walter jr. had stopped breathing. sabrina frantically knocked on the neighbors' doors asking for a ride to the hospital. >> and that's when i started asking her some more questions about the downstairs neighbor. where does the downstairs neighbor live exactly? we even went to the apartments and tried to find the downstairs neighbor, and we could not find him. >> she couldn't keep her story straight. they kept changing as more questions were being asked of

her, trying to figure out what had happened. >> by the end of the night, sabrina had given police as many as six different versions of her story. >> after the detectives finally took her out, i said, girls, go home. sit down, and write everything you remember about tonight down because this is going to trial. somebody is going to be accused of killing that baby. >> the next morning, sabrina signed a confession stating that she had hit her baby. she was immediately charged with capital murder, and her trial would begin 11 months later. mosley sudduth was the public defender appointed to sabrina's case. >> capital murders, they're hard. it takes a lot to do one, and a

lot of folks just aren't up to it, to be honest with you. sabrina was my first one. i was dumb enough to think it didn't matter. so i crawled on in it. >> if a jury convicts her of her crime, this 19-year-old columbus woman faces a lifetime prison sentence or could get the death penalty. columbus resident sabrina butler was just 18 years old last may when a grand jury indicted her on capital murder charges in the death of her own son. >> the prosecution would be led by forrest allgood, a young d.a. building a reputation for aggressively seeking the death penalty. >> throughout the day, nurses and police officers have been asked to answer questions and identify pictures showing the condition of the baby's body at the time of his death. >> butler's defense offered no witnesses or expert testimony. >> we looked. we couldn't find anyone that

would substantiate anything that sabrina said to us. obviously in a capital murder case, you need experts. you need all these things, and we just didn't have them, and we didn't get them. and that's just the way it is. >> sudduth also decided to keep butler off the witness stand. >> i believe that there was a fair amount of abuse in her background. because of that, a lot of those type of children are more prone to be a little bit less expressive. i thought there was too much of a chance that things might go south. >> i was just a dumb kid, man. i don't even know all the stuff that i said or didn't. i just knew that i was in trouble, and i didn't want them to know that i left my son at the house by his self. that was my main thought. >> her defense attorney had her

dressed up like a little girl. she had her hair in pigtails. this poor innocent girl that didn't know what was going on or something. anything to make her look like something she wasn't. >> the jury, comprised of seven white and five black members, reached a verdict in under two hours. sabrina butler was found guilty of murder with malicious intent. >> the defendant in this case, 19-year-old sabrina butler, showed no reaction when the pronouncement was read tonight. death by lethal injection. >> when you consider all that apparently that little fellow went to in his short nine months, yeah, i think it's appropriate. >> and i just pretty much was sitting there. that's all i could do. i wanted to jump up and jump across the table and yell and scream and, you know, but just

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cancel anytime and your books are yours to keep forever. audible. the most inspiring minds. the most compelling stories. text "listen9" to 500500 to start your free trial today. sbree na after being convicted of her infant son's murder, sabrina butler was sent to wait for her execution in parchman, mississippi. she was just the second woman on mississippi's death row at the

time. >> i think i'd stayed on the floor in the corner crying every day. >> sabrina was all alone with little family to speak of. >> as far as my childhoochildho wasn't the best childhood. we were very poor. my mom struggled very hard to take care of me and my two brothers. we had a lot of times where we didn't have food, and she had a drinking problem. she really didn't have time for us as far as hugging us and, you know, tucking us in bed, you know, that kind of thing. she didn't do that. >> by age 15, sabrina was married and pregnant. two years later, she was divorced and pregnant with her second child, walter junior, who she was convicted of killing. >> i was more depressed than anything because of what was happening to me, trying to figure out a way out and didn't know, you know, how to get out, where to go, who to turn to.

in jail, i wrote letters to different people, you know, trying to get my case heard. i wrote jet magazine. i wrote a whole bunch of different places. >> one of the people sabrina wrote to was leroy brooks, a leader in columbus' african-american community. >> this letter is dated the 19th of march, 1990. mr. brooks, i'm innocent, and the only thing that i did wrong was leave the house and left my son, walter, alone. and i know that was wrong. i've been in jail for 11 months. am i going to die on july 2nd, 1990, for real? sabrina butler. >> leroy brooks had a candlelight vigil for me at the courthouse after i got sentenced, and i think over 500

people showed up. >> there was the notion if you were black and you got caught up in the criminal justice system, your chances of going to jail or prison was far greater. >> the history of our state is pretty well known, and it's always been a struggle. i think race probably touches just about every issue that emerges here in some fashion, to some degree. my attitude is that jim crow never died. it just dresses better and has better table manners. >> sabrina didn't get a fair trial. she didn't get a good trial. that one stayed with me more than i'd like to admit. >> as sabrina's appeals began, her defense attorney contacted clive stafford smith, a british-born attorney special e specializing in civil rights and death row cases in mississippi. stafford-smith handles half the death row appeals in the state.

>> i met sabrina at the women's prison just outside jackson, mississippi. she was just this scared girl. she had lost her child. she'd lost her liberty. she was facing execution. so i guess my first meeting with her was just to try and get her to stop crying. >> clive was god-sent. clive would bring me artwork, you know, pencil and paper, stuff like that. and he always would see the lighter side and make me laugh and, you know, show me that i was human. >> clive immediately set to work on sabrina's appeals, looking for any mistakes made by district attorney forrest allgood. >> forrest was just a very dedicated prosecutor. he tried everybody, okay? black, white, yellow, green,

purple polka dots. he's going to try everybody. forrest never discriminated against anybody when he was trying to kill them. >> forrest allgood prosecuted a 16-year-old who had suffered a still birth one month after her 16th birthday for murder because there was a trace of the metabolite of cocaine. this is a 16-year-old. there's a still birth here. we don't know why, and so we're going to make somebody pay for it. >> one of the things i think that drove forrest was he was a very, very profoundly christian person in a fairly old testament sort of way. >> forrest has a very conservative approach to law and order. southerners are emotional people, and they're emotionally driven. they're going to fall on the side of the victim, and it's still an eye for an eye mentality here in a lot of respects. >> i found it pretty incredible

just reading the prosecution case. you know, you look at it, and you think these people don't know what they're talking about. i mean, really, there's no way she should have ended up where she ended up. it's easy to make someone look like she might be guilty. but the real question is, is there any other possible explanation? >> within the transcripts, clive noticed that forrest allgood had told the jury that sabrina's failure to testify was a sign of her guilt. 2 1/2 years into sabrina's death sentence, the mississippi supreme court considered her appeal. >> on the appeal, i believe we raised about 17 different issues, and we would have won on a lot of them. in the end, the supreme court of mississippi reversed the conviction based on the fact that forrest allgood, the prosecutor, had made a comment on sabrina's failure to testify. >> forrest just couldn't stop himself. that's a no-no. you don't do that. and when you do, they're going to do something about it.

that is engraved in stone. >> they called me on the intercom and said, you have a call from your attorney. clive said, well, i got some good news for you, and i was like what? he's like, your case has been turned over. i was running and screaming and running through the dog gone hallway and stuff. i didn't want to go back in that cell because i was like, it's over with. you know, finally, they saw the truth, you know. >> but another trial could land sabrina back on death row. so clive sought a plea deal and soon found himself in a face to face meeting with district attorney forrest allgood. of growth opportunities...take e with a level of protection in down markets. so you can be less concerned about your retirement savings. talk with your advisor about shield annuities from brighthouse financial- established by metlife.

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♪ after getting sabrina butler off death row, clive stafford smith wanted to avoid another trial. so he went to d.a. forrest allgood's office in an attempt to broker a plea deal. >> so i go into his office, and he's looking at me with a sort of owlish, cold look. and then he starts praying. and time goes by. 20 minutes goes by, and finally about half an hour later, he looks up across his desk and

announces to me, i've prayed, and i can offer you life without parole. and i'm sorry. i think i probably did laugh, i was so taken aback by it. this is woman who i was totally convinced was innocent, and this guy is telling me she should go to prison for the rest of her life was a good deal. in my opinion, it was totally delusional, but he believed. >> while all gogood disputes th events, clive knew for sabrina's second trial, he would be up against more than just an aggressive d.a. >> i suppose of all the cases you deal with, the death of a child is the easiest one for the prosecutor to say this is a totally innocent victim, and, indeed, this parent is the one who had the duty to protect that child. so in terms of the narrative of the case that the prosecutor is spinning, it's incredibly easy, and it's very easy for the jurors to see that and get very,

very angry. >> whenever someone dies and the cause of death is unexplained, inquiry is even more intense when there's a baby. suspicion is turned on the parent or the person who had the child when the child died. >> tonight, a great na babysitter is behind bars after police say she injured an infant in her care. >> the child's mother claims she was a victim of shaken baby syndrome at her daycare center. >> a pasco county man goes on trial for shaking his baby so severely, the child almost died. >> neighbors say they're stunned something like this happened in their quiet area. >> we as a society have lost the ability to recognize they're just acts of god. they're just things that happen that we can't explain, because we always want to not just explain, but we want to punish. we want to have revenge on people. >> clive suspected the mississippi medical examiner's

office, long accused of delivering medical conclusions favorable to prosecutors, had made grave errors in sabrina's case. >> i knew there were very few effective pathologists in mississippi. the guy who is the original doctor, who is not experienced in this area and had way overstated what he saw. so i spent a lot of time in the medical library looking at what other illnesses could have had exactly the same symptoms as they saw. and one of the things i found in this book was chronic neff rottic syndrome. >> the symptoms of chronic neff rottic syndrome could explain the scarring found on walter junior's kidney as well as other internal injuries. and the child's pro-lapsed rectum, a somewhat common condition in infants, could have been the result of natural causes. >> i'm not saying that's absolutely what happened.

but if you can't rule out that there's that totally innocent explanation for what happened, then you surely can't convict someone and sentence them to death. >> to help refute the conclusions in walter junior's autopsy, clive hired chris sperry, the chief medical examiner of georgia. >> i had requested to look at photographs, look at autopsy tissue slides, things like that, that are really routinely part of an autopsy. and unfortunately much of that really was not available and never did become available. i think that just underscores some of the really half-baked way in which the case was approached from a pathology perspective. >> the state's autopsy had found cysts on walter junior's kidneys and bruising on his right lower chest, attributed to a single or multiple blows. >> this is the way the system in mississippi was set up. there were no investigations

done. in fact, no testing done to see whether the kidney function is normal or not. the child could have been in kidney failure, and actually that's something that is routinely done in a forensic autopsy, which is another error that was made. >> sperry's findings would rule out allgood's theory that sabrina had punched walter one to two hours before arriving at the hospital, causing an infection and death. >> in reality, the infection the child had would have taken at least 24 to 48 hours to progress to the point where it had gotten to when the child died. and that's the fundamental mistake here. the pathology group reached a conclusion that fit with what the law enforcement and other people involved in investigating the case wanted. she was convicted on scientific lies.

>> clive knew that forrest allgood would likely call on the help of state medical examiner stephen hayne for sabrina's second trial. hayne performed 1,700 autopsies a year in mississippi, six times the recommended average. >> hayne had testified on behalf of forrest allgood a number of times in cases because, you know, forrest allgood was always seeking the death penalty. >> dr. haynes, he has a history of working for prosecutors, often reaching the conclusions he thinks they expect him to reach. >> hayne and his team reportedly smoked cigars and ate sandwiches while working on cadavers, leading his practice to be called a sushi shop and a sausage factory. >> i think that if he had come into the courtroom and given some strong opinion, that's really dangerous because you're kind of friendly with forrest allgood. i wanted to make sure that he didn't show up as a witness for the other side. >> in a surprising move, clive

would enlist dr. hayne as a consultant for the defense, effectively neutralizing one of allgood's most reliable experts. but with sabrina's trial quickly approaching, clive still needed to address one of the most damning pieces of evidence against sabrina, her signed confession stating that she had punched her infant son.

while sabrina waited in county jail for her second trial, she met a sympathetic prison guard named joe porter. >> she had a nice personality, and what everybody else used to say about her, i couldn't see it. and i never believed it. peoples have their own opinions about what they say, but i never was convinced that she was the person that other peoples thought. >> joe thought i was innocent from day one, and he said he just loved me when he first saw me. >> i've always believed that she would be free one day. you know, we kind of told each other we would be together. i went and found us a place.

i had no doubt that things was going to go in our favor. >> in the second trial, i knew that they were going to use the same things that they used in the first trial. and i just was happy that i had some attorneys that were going to tell, you know, my side of the story for a change. >> with sabrina's second trial approaching, clive knew he'd need help pleading her case to a mississippi jury. so he enlisted the help of local lawyer rob mcduff. >> at the first trial, i think the jury there very much had a one-dimensional picture of sabrina, which is of a mother who was careless, who didn't care about her child, and there was nothing presented to counter that picture. >> i think they thought i was a crazy young girl and i actually did kill my child. they thought i was on drugs.

i ain't ever been on no drugs in my life. i should have been, you know, more there for my son. you know, i thought i left that out of my life and started letting other people keep him. and they spent more time with him than i did. >> i think one of the elements of this case that was hardest was that she was not a good parent at the time. and there's nothing so dangerous perhaps as the sanction mowny of another parent. we've all been in the supermarket where we've seen another person with their child, and they've smacked it or yelled at it and we all look down our noses at them and say they're dreadful parents, aren't they? so this is say human experience we've been through. and that went a lodge wng way ts convincing the jury that she's not a good parent. she probably did kill the child.

>> clive and rob knew they needed to humanize sabrina and explain what happened that night, including sabrina's incriminating statements to the police. >> when you look at the case against stream, what you're looking at is a bunch of statements none of which mean a lot in isolation, but put together made her look bad. then you've got the injuries to the child, which needed some explanation. but there's not much more than that. it's not like there's dna everywhere, they're videos everywhere, there's messes of physical evidence. >> at least some policemen will start questioning in a way that can sometimes be described as coercive. we wanted to show how their heavy-handed tactics caused sabrina to give different stories. >> the detective hammered me and scared me to death. i mean he was yelling. he was screaming. he was telling me, you abused that baby. you beat him. you stomped him. you did this. you did that. and i kept trying to tell him that i didn't do those things.

he didn't want to hear that. >> can you imagine an 18-year-old, your baby dies, and you've been arrested. and i think that's the reason she kind of kept changing her stories was because of the fear. >> i think she was genuinely, genuinely desperately confused about what had happened. she had sort of repressed it in a way that made her very flat about it. people would respond in a rather sanctimonious and pious way, you should be crying, and if you're not crying, that means you did it. >> most of the folks on the jury were white, and they were middle-aged or older. and certainly in that regard, you're talking about a young black female. let's face it, you're not going

to get a jury of your peers. >> knowing he needed a sympathetic jury, clive drew on his experience working in mississippi and petitioned to enlist jurors from rural and sparsely populated pinola county. >> i knew that pinola county was divided into two halves, and one-half was majority white, and the other half was majority black. forrest allgood didn't know about pinola county, and when pinola county came up, i said, we've got to have one district or the other. why don't we have the second district? and no one thought about it, and everybody agreed to that. forrest allgood's face, i've never seen anything like it as he walked into that courtroom. he was not used to dealing with a jury that was majority black. >> the jury consisted of one white and 11 black jurors. >> while it's not like those inju jurors are sitting there saying i'm going to acquit her because she's a black woman because

let's face it. the victim was a black child. but at least those jurors are much more likely to be suspicious that the police are not always telling the truth. so i think that's quite important to have a jury that is at least somewhat skeptical. >> but clive and rob were about to face the challenge of refuting scientific reports that at the first trial had condemned sabrina to death.

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to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! sabrina's second trial began on december 14th, 1995. in court, clive fought to have some of the most damning evidence deemed inadmissible, including photos of walter junior's body. >> pictures are one of the most underestimated aspects of any capital trial. no human being can look at pictures of a dead baby and not be immensely moved emotionally. you ask people before you show them the pictures, you know, do

you think sabrina butler is guilty of capital murder? and they say, no, it's presumption of innocence, whatever. then you just show them the pictures of the baby, and you ask again. you know, 70% or 80% of people say she's guilty based just on looking at pictures. well, those pictures prove absolutely nothing about who did what, but we as human beings have this massive emotional response to them. >> i've seen hundreds of autopsy photographs, and they all prejudice. that's why they put them on there. that probably had a lot to do with, you know, making it real for the jury. >> against the objections of forrest allgood, the judge agreed to keep the photos out. but clive still had to explain the bruising to walter's body, so he focused on the cpr that sabrina had administered to walter. >> i panicked. i just grabbed him and ran next

door. i didn't know what i was supposed to do. so i applied adult cpr to him on the way to the hospital. so whatever was wrong, i think that by me putting pressure on him like i did, i created -- made it worse. i just didn't know how to do cpr, and i applied it wrong. i wanted them to show that i tried to save his life. that's what i wanted them to do. >> in a risky maneuver, clive cross-examined a columbus police officer to prove his point. >> you really do have to approach a case as if it's television. on a strange level, it's theater, and that's kind of a reprehensible thing to say. when the policeman took the stand, i wanted to test out whether that lead detective knew how to do cpr on a small child like that. so i had this in front of him on the witness stand, and i said to the detective, how would you do cpr? and he had had cpr training.

he should have known how to do it. what you should do, is you just use two fingers, and you do it incredibly lightly, and that's how you do cpr for a little baby. but he does cpr the way you would on an adult, which is you get your hands across like that and you pump. if you're doing that to a baby, that baby is dead. so the jurors are watching that, and they're seeing that detective do probably what sabrina did. >> the jury was shaking their head. they was like -- you know, they was looking like this is crazy. you know, that's the way they were looking. >> but clive knew that this alternate theory alone might not fully convince the jury. >> the jurors are used to watching tv programs, and it may be all very complicated and lots of false leads and whatever. but at the end of the show, someone's guilty, and that's the way they expect to see it. and that's sort of the way it has to happen. you've got to have a fall

person. >> clive had learned that walter junior's father, a man named walter shin, was serving nine years in prison for felony and aggravated assault. >> we brought him in, and he was wearing an orange prison uniform, and he had his shackles on. and as he went across the courtroom, there was the clink, clink, clink of the shackles. then he took the stand, and then he took the fifth and refutzed to answer questions, which of course just makes people look guilty. >> after three days of testimony, the jury of 11 black and 1 white juror began their deliberations. >> they put me in the back in one of those little cells at the courthouse. clive and them came back to talk to me, and i just -- i was crying, and they were crying with me, you know. it's just the anticipation of waiting, you know.

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after years spent on death row for the death of her child,

sabrina's second trial had now come to an end. >> when the verdict comes back, it's the worst time in the world. the jurors come in, and it's reading tea leaves, right? i find them terribly traumatic, the verdict. >> my legs felt like spaghetti noodles, and i just fell to the floor. clive and them couldn't even hold me up. >> it took the jury only an hour and a half to reach their verdict. >> i was just in awe. i was thanking god. i was praising him. whoo, that was a special moment. it took them less than two hours to throw me away, give me the death penalty, then less than two hours to set me free. that's crazy. >> shortly after leaving death row, sabrina married the guard she'd met in prison, joe porter.

>> i never had children. i never -- never owned a house. within the first five years, we owned our first house. it was just what i had asked god for. sabrina's the best wife that any man could ever want to ask for. >> the fact that she had this lovely, solid person to go out and build a life with was desperately important. if there's one thing that dictates how the people who have been exonerated get on in life, it's the fact they have a good, strong, decent spouse. >> today sabrina and joe live with their three children in columbus. but sabrina has found it difficult to return to normal life. >> as far as my struggles, yeah. having a job, i can't seem to find a job anywhere.

i don't know why. my case has been expunged. i have trust issues. i don't trust people. i don't trust the police. i will always have sad thoughts because, you know, i think of all the things that i did wrong. i think of all the things that i could have did, you know, to save him. i think of leaving him at the house by hiss self. i think of what he was going through at the end. i think he was sick. you know, i don't think nobody did anything to him. >> in 2011, sabrina and joe were given a clue as to what may have killed walter when their teenage daughter was diagnosed with a debilitating kidney disease. >> my daughter has polycystic kidney disease type 2, which is genetic. she says cysts growing on both

kidneys that are fluid-filled, and eventually the cysts are going to snuff the kidneys out to where they won't function. >> polycystic kidney disease is passed down from parent to child, and sabrina and joe have learned they aren't the only family suffering in columbus. >> we knew there was something wrong in our community, didn't know what it was, but we knew there was something wrong because people kept dying. we have an infant mortality rate higher than third-world countries. >> pastor steve jamison was among the first to discover that a lumber treatment plant in town, owned by kerr mcgee, was dumping massive quantities of a toxic chemical called ceo oh society. >> when they found the ceo oh society in the early 80s, they moved all the lightweight people out. they did not tell the blacks who were buying their property that that property was contaminated. the government knew. the health department knew.

but the general public where we were did not know. >> i really didn't know anything about creosote until the minister started working on the church, and they found a substance underneath the ground. >> how far away would you say that plant is from where you were living? >> not even a mile. not even a mile. very close. >> in 2014, kerr mcgee paid $67 million to clean up their former facility in columbus. but sabrina and joe have yet to receive any compensation. >> god knows what's under the ground, you know, what's still coming through the pipes. peoples coming out with kidney problems, what my daughter has. i can't rule out that me and sabrina drinking the water during the time when she was carrying our child. you know, god forbid.

>> after serving 25 years as district attorney, forrest allgood was voted out of office in 2015. >> i guess my whole thing is you went through all this 20 years ago, and now that you look at all the facts, are you willing to say you made a mistake? >> ms. butler's case actually helps us forward at a great personal cost to her certainly. but when we can acknowledge our injustices, for mississippi, that's a big thing. >> the reason sabrina's case has always been very important in my own experience is because it's a case where i believe no one committed a crime. i believe that little walter died of natural causes from a tragedy that we didn't fully

appreciate. >> you know, you buy a new car, you get an owner's guide telling you how to operate it and how you do things and when you need to put air in your tires and all that. but children don't come with guidebooks. and if a person has not had a good childhood themselves, they don't know how to treat a child. >> i never thought that they would say, you are a murderer. you killed your child. i never in a million years thought like that. and the first thought was to lie, to say, oh, man, you know, i got to come up with something, you know, because i don't want them to know that i left my son by hisself. that was the only thought i had. they turned it into a nightmare. this is -- this is a nightmare.

and my life will never be, you know -- it won't be the same. ♪ >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. to everyone live from atlanta, we are following the breaking news from indonesia, the death toll continuing to rise in west jaba following a tsunami. hello, i'm natalie allen. >> i'm george howell. welcome to viewers in the united states and around the world. the latest as we know it, officials say at least 168 people are now confirmed dead. hundreds of others are hurt, this after a tsunami hit a popular tourist coastline in indonesia. >> you can see the devastated tsunami hit homes. some