It was supposed to be a fun family outing to the movies, but then Nair Rodriguez' 19-year-old daughter got under her skin. They fought, she said, and she slapped her daughter.
Moments later, police arrived on a domestic dispute call at the Moore, Oklahoma, theater and confronted - not Nair Rodriguez - but her husband Luis. They took him down, and after the encounter on February 15, he was dead.
Cell phone video taken by his wife and released this week shows the final minutes of the takedown.
Nair Rodriguez accuses officers of brutality. Police say they were following protocol and used no undue force.
Argument, upset
The mother-daughter spat upset the mother so badly that she bolted for the family car. Her husband Luis followed her to calm her down, family attorney Michael Brooks-Jimenez told reporters.
That's when a group of police and theater security officers turned up, he said.
What happened next is disputed.
His wife has said officers beat Luis Rodriguez, CNN affiliate KFOR reported. But Moore Police Chief Jerry Stillings calls the actions of his officers "reasonable."
He would not go in to much detail and said an investigation is underway. But he mentioned that police used pepper spray, CNN affiliate KOCO reported.
Luis Rodriguez ended up on the ground with five men pinning him down, and wife Nair pulled out a cell phone.
Her fearful cries fill the recording.
"Luis! Luis!" she calls out frantically. Her husband does not respond, does not appear to move.
She calls to the officers to assure her that he is alright.
"Please somebody tell me that he is alive," she implores. "He is not moving."
The officers appear calm. One tells her that he will talk to her, once they are finished securing her husband.
Then one walks over to the camera. He tells her that police have called in a medical unit to check on her husband.
It wasn't him
The officer says police received a call about domestic violence before confronting her husband.
It wasn't him, Nair Rodriguez tells him. "I hit my daughter," she says. She wants to know why they have pinned down her husband.
"He refused to give his ID," the officer said. "He got combative."
She notices blood on the officer. "Is he bleeding?" She demands to know.
"I'm bleeding; that's me," the officer says.
An ambulance can be seen in the background, and Luis Rodriguez is lifted onto a stretcher.
The video ends shortly afterward.
Cause of death
An autopsy may reveal more about why Luis Rodriguez died, and surveillance camera footage of the encounter in the movie theater parking lot may reveal what happened before his wife pulled out her cell phone camera.
What police describe as normal procedure, lawyer Brooks-Jimenez describes it as something brutal and possibly deadly.
Pepper spray to the face and the weight of five men on top of him.
CNN has reached out to Brooks-Jimenez for further comment and has placed calls to the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation.
Had it not been the debut night for Seth Myers as the new host of NBC’s “Late Night,” Vice President Joe Biden may have revealed his plans for 2016.
The “Saturday Night Live” alum asked the Vice President if he would share his thoughts on a potential presidential run in 2016.
“I was planning on making a major announcement tonight, but I decided tonight’s your night,” Biden joked. “So I hope you’ll invite me back.”
The Vice President wasn’t ready to make any announcement but Myer’s other first-night guest was quick to respond.
“I’m going to run for president,” said former “SNL” co-star Amy Poehler.
It wasn’t the first time Poehler and Biden have appeared together in front of cameras. Vice President Biden made a cameo on Poehler’s NBC small-town government sitcom “Parks and Recreation” in 2012.
Biden did share some details about the much discussed moment from this year’s State of the Union Address, when he was seen emphatically pointing to an unnamed individual on the House Floor.
“A senior senator said, ‘Look Joe I know you and Barack are friends but don’t stand up on every damn thing he says,’” said the Vice President. “I counted 17 times this particular senator stood up in front of the president. So I went like this to point to him. Talk about a suck up.”
The late night talk shown scene isn’t unfamiliar territory for Biden with this being his third appearance.
He appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno in 2010 and read the Top 10 List on “The Late Show” with David Letterman in 2012.
Biden has not forgotten about daytime television either.
Tuesday he will tape an appearance on “The View.” It will be his fourth time visiting the daytime talk show.
The turmoil in Ukraine has swept aside its president, brought about the release a prominent opposition leader and raised fears the country could break apart.
After the bloodshed in the streets of Kiev last week - the deadliest violence Ukraine has suffered since its independence 22 years ago - the political twists and turns came thick and fast over the weekend.
As a new week begins, uncertainty has taken a hold in the divided nation as Ukraine tries to reshape its political landscape.
An arrest warrant has been issued for ousted President Viktor Yanukovych over the killings of civilians, a government official said Monday. But officials don't know where he is.
Click here for what you need to know to get caught up.
The violence in Ukraine is resonating all the way to Sochi – just a few hundred miles away – where some Ukrainian athletes have pulled out of the Olympic competition.
By Gregory Wallace
Jack Lew sees good signs for the economy both on Capital Hill and Main Street.
And his message to the rest of the world: there's work to be done.
The Treasury Secretary said he is encouraged by Congress, which in recent months agreed on a budget,spending bill and debt limit measure.
"Maybe - just maybe," Lew said, "we'll be able, for a couple of years, to keep doing business that way."
By handling these matters, Washington is sending a worldwide message, one Lew says he'll bring to a gathering of global financial leaders this week in Australia.
Lew spoke in an interview with CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans as he prepared for that G20 meeting. Here are five highlights from that interview:
1. Thanks, Washington: Last year's government shutdown and the brinkmanship before it took a toll on the economy. But what matters is that Washington is getting its act together.
"The last four months have been very different from the prior two years," he said.
And it's showing.
"You look at the economic growth over the last six months - (there's a) decided arc of progress," he said, specifically citing "sustained job growth."
But Lew acknowledged room for growth. The numbers support that: hiring in December and January was weak and far below expectations.
They've given up their ground before - voluntarily, as a political concession. But that seems to be over.
After the deaths of 25 people in clashes a day earlier, Ukrainian protesters are prepared to stand and fight again Wednesday.
Police want to clear them out of central Kiev. Some of them died trying to stay put Tuesday - using projectiles and burning barricades to keep security forces at bay at Kiev's Maidan, or Independence Square.
It was the deadliest day in the months-long standoff between the government and opposition leaders.
Thousands of demonstrators have packed Independence Square since November, when President Viktor Yanukovych reversed a decision to sign a trade deal with the European Union and instead turned toward Russia.
The unrest intensified after an anti-protest law went into effect. Throngs of demonstrators took to the streets to protest the law.
Police and protesters were among Tuesday's dead. A journalist and a government employee died, too.
More than 240 others were hospitalized, Ukraine's health ministry said.
Overnight, demonstrators stocked up, passing stones hand to hand, filling Molotov cocktails and stoking flaming barricades with wood and tires.
They prepared a makeshift compressed-air cannon to catapult the projectiles into police ranks.
Hundreds of others came out to give moral support to those holding the square and to add their numbers to the throng wanting to keep the opposition movement alive.
Corporate lawyer and iReporter Volodymyr Solohub was one of them. Whenever police threaten to clear the Maidan he goes there.
Tuesday, he watched as protesters rushed injured people from the front lines to medics.
"Some of them had broken hands, and blood was flowing down their faces," he said Wednesday.
Barrages of stun grenades shattered the air around him through the night.
"When it goes off, the whole area vibrates," he said. But the barricades held, and it made him happy.
When the sun rose Wednesday, smoke was still rising from them into the sky.
Newly-released video shows a frightening bus crash in Boise, Idaho.
Iran is rolling back parts of its nuclear program and getting relief from sanctions in return as an interim agreement aimed at gauging Tehran's willingness to curb its nuclear ambitions appears to be working with global powers gearing up for talks on Tuesday to forge a long-term pact.
"So far everyone, both Iran and all of the rest of us who provided some very limited, targeted sanctions relief have kept their commitments," Wendy Sherman, a senior State Department official and lead negotiator for the United States on the Iran deal, told Wolf Blitzer on Monday in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room."
Sherman, the under secretary for political affairs, spoke from Vienna where talks on a comprehensive accord between Iran, the United States, Germany and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are due to begin on Tuesday.
The six-month deal was reached in November and took effect in January.
The Vienna talks "will build on that first step, because we don't want it to be the only step," Sherman said.
"We go into this negotiation very clear eyed, very sober," she said. "It's going to be very tough."
Her comments came as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, said his country would not "renege" on the talks, but predicted they "will not lead anywhere."
"What I care about is what Iran does much more than what Iran says," Sherman said.
She added that any final deal will be contingent on Iran taking "concrete" verifiable steps that prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The United States and its allies believe Iran is aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, while Tehran has said it's atomic efforts are peaceful.
Sherman said she had seen recent Iranian reports that Russia has offered to build a nuclear reactor inside Iran in exchange for oil shipments, but did not offer a comment on whether or not that was a good idea.
A Kentucky pastor who starred in a reality show about snake-handling in church has died - of a snakebite.
Jamie Coots died Saturday evening after refusing to be treated, Middleborough police said.
On "Snake Salvation," the ardent Pentecostal believer said that he believed that a passage in the Bible suggests poisonous snakebites will not harm believers as long as they are anointed by God. The practice is illegal in most states, but still goes on, primarily in the rural South.
Coots was a third-generation "serpent handler" and aspired to one day pass the practice and his church, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, on to his adult son, Little Cody.
The National Geographic show featured Coots and cast handling all kinds of poisonous snakes - copperheads, rattlers, cottonmouths. The channel's website shows a picture of Coots, goateed, wearing a fedora. "Even after losing half of his finger to a snake bite and seeing others die from bites during services," Coots "still believes he must take up serpents and follow the Holiness faith," the website says.
On Sunday, National Geographic Channels spokeswoman Stephanie Montgomery sent CNN this statement: "In following Pastor Coots for our series Snake Salvation, we were constantly struck by his devout religious convictions despite the health and legal peril he often faced.
"Those risks were always worth it to him and his congregants as a means to demonstrate their unwavering faith. We were honored to be allowed such unique access to Pastor Jamie and his congregation during the course of our show, and give context to his method of worship. Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time."
In February 2013, Coots was given one year of probation for crossing into Tennessee with venomous snakes. He was previously arrested in 2008 for keeping 74 snakes in his home, according to National Geographic. Tennessee banned snake handling in 1947 after five people were bitten in churches over two years' time, the channel says on the show site.
On one episode, Coots, who collected snakes, is shown trying to wrest a Western diamondback out of its nook under a rock deep in East Texas. He's wearing a cowboy hat and a T-shirt that says "The answer to Y2K – JESUS."
The pastor is helped by his son and a couple of church members.
"He'll give up, just sooner or later," one of the members says. "Just be careful. Ease him out."
The group bags two snakes, which a disappointed Coots says hardly justifies the trip to Texas.
"Catching two snakes the first day, 'course we'd hoped for more," Coots says in the video. "We knew that the next day we was gonna have to try to hunt harder and hope for more snakes."
The Vermont Teddy Bear Company is selling a 4.5-foot teddy bear that CNN's John Berman says is sending mixed messages. What do you think?
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