Someone else's words will tell the story today.In an eighteen-month investigation, A.C. Thompson spoke with the Algiers Point shooters, survivors, witnesses, law enforcement, forensic pathologists, historians, medical doctors and residents. He pored over more than 800 autopsies and death records. "What emerged was a disturbing picture of New Orleans in the days after the storm, when the city fractured along racial fault lines as its government collapsed."
Katrina's hidden race war
by A.C. THOMPSON
The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted.
It was September 1, 2005, some three days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, and somebody had just blasted Herrington, who is African-American, with a shotgun. "I just hit the ground. I didn't even know what happened," recalls Herrington, a burly 32-year-old with a soft drawl.
The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified Herrington's companions--his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. "I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck," Alexander recalls. "I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again." Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander's back, arm and buttocks.
Herrington shouted at the other men to run and turned to face his attackers: three armed white males. Herrington says he hadn't even seen the men or their weapons before the shooting began. As Alexander and Collins fled, Herrington ran in the opposite direction, his hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his throat. Behind him, he says, the gunmen yelled, "Get him! Get that nigger!"
Read the rest and draw your own conclusions on the article that appears in the January 5, 2009 edition of The Nation.
PHOTO CREDIT: Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun
CAPTION: A vigilante shot Donnell Herrington twice shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.
3 comments:
There have been times in the past when the federal government needed to step in to stop similar criminal behavior and law-enforcement disinterest. It appears this is the time and place for another intervention.
It is truly sad that this story of crimes against humanity wasn't picked up sooner. I suspect the investigative trails have grown pretty cold by now.
It's disturbing, to say the least.
Makes you wonder if press attention will change anything.
You know, my ex had a friend in the military at the time of Katrina and he relayed some truths that the government wants you to believe only happens in other countries during a time of crisis.
Am I shocked by this? No. But disheartened all the same. And sadly, I think media coverage of this incident is a mere drop in the bucket.
Thanks for posting this.
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