Posted on 09/03/2005 5:57:38 PM PDT by Lorianne
People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger-happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.
Police and National Guard troops on Saturday closed down the two centers -- the Superdome arena and the city's convention center -- but then penned in the storm victims outside in sweltering heat to keep them from trying to walk out of the city.
Military helicopters and buses staged a massive evacuation to take away thousands of people who waited in orderly lines in stifling heat outside the flooded convention center.
The refugees, who were waiting to be taken to sports stadiums and other huge shelters across Texas and northern Louisiana, described how the convention center and the Superdome became lawless hellholes beset by rape and murder.
Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.
In one, a young man was run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer, in another a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier, witnesses said.
Police here refused to discuss or confirm either incident. National Guard spokesman Lt. Col Pete Schneider said "I have not heard any information of a weapon being discharged."
"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. "A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windscreen and they shot him dead."
Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale of horror.
"Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head," Batiste said.
The young man's body lay in the street by the Convention Center's entrance on Saturday morning, covered in a black blanket, a stream of congealed blood staining the street around him. Nearby his family sat in shock.
A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.
"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave," she said through tears.
People here said there were now 22 bodies of adults and children stored inside the building, but troops guarding the building refused to confirm that and threatened to beat reporters seeking access to the makeshift morgue.
People trying to walk out are forced back at gunpoint - something troops said was for their own safety. "It's sad, but how far do you think they would get," one soldier said.
"They have us living here like animals," said Wvonnette Grace-Jordan, here with five children, the youngest only six weeks old. "We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America."
One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, "They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here."
The Louisiana National Guard soldier said, "We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq."
Across town at the Superdome, where as many as 38,000 refugees camped out until Wednesday night when evacuation buses first came, the 4,000 still there were corralled outside, hoping to get on four waiting buses with seats for only 200.
The scene at the sports stadium was one of abject filth. Crammed into a small area after the building was shut to them last night, those remaining sat amid heaps of garbage, piled in places waist high. The stench of human waste pervaded the interior of the now vacant stadium.
One police officer told Reuters there were 100 people in a makeshift morgue at the Superdome, mostly people who died of heat exhaustion, and that six babies had been born there since last Saturday, when people arrived to take shelter.
At the arena, too, there was much talk of bedlam after dark.
"We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom," one National Guard soldier told Reuters. "Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."
I'm sure in the neighborhoods most of these people came from this kind of thing never happens.
*rolls eyes*
There. Fixed it.
I suppose it's GWB's fault that these animals rape and murder each other?
Is it his fault also when there was no hurricane?
This past week is no different fom any week in any big city in america, as far as the crime goes. Is that Bush's fault too?
These people make me friggin' sick.
I definitely agree about that.
Yesterday afternoon, I read a posted first-hand account of total chaos in the Astrodome, by a purported law professor. This person said that soon it would overtake the Superdome in terms of bad conditions.
I mentioned it here, and someone, I believe it was rineaux (that's why I pinged you, rineaux :) ), had other first-hand accounts that said things were pretty orderly and people were getting what they needed. (I hope I'm remembering the right person who said this to me, LOL!
So yes, I agree. I think the story has a definite bias, but it doesn't mean it needs to be pulled.
There is no better place to get at the truth than FR.
Our viewers at home will decide that, the readers of FR.
Not you or I.
SteveMcKing, I cannot disagree more vigorously.
We can discuss this all we want into the wee hours of the morning, but we will NOT be able to prove or disprove a single allegation.
Now, there may be exceptions. For example, if Mr. Baptiste was demonstrated to never have been in New Orleans, but was instead shown being interviewed in Berkeley, CA on the day Katrina struck, then we might be able to discount his story.
But I don't think something like that is going to happen, do you?
Woman on CBS News right now: "Alligators were eating people.."
"Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death"
Now THATS what I'm talking about!
About damned time someone stood the f*ck up and tok care of business.
That and the boy the stole the bus and saved like 80 people are the only stories I've heard yet of people that had enough wits about them to actually do something besides sit in the street and wait for all powerfull government to fix everything.
It's Reuters and its written so poorly and incoherently that it will probably be nominated for a Pulitzer...America has become Rwanda(sarcasm!)
I am not taking issue with whether this should be pulled or not.
I am taking issue with the hypothesis that specific "facts" or rumors from this article will be proven or disproven by open discourse. I think our discourse is irrelevant to the truth of the allegations.
For example, the 16 year old who was run over and shot "just because he was crossing the road"...how would we propose to declare that fact or fiction from our computers at home? Perhaps if there was an electronic image posted or a video showing the event, then maybe someone knowlegeable about those things could pass judgement on the authenticity, or whether it had been electronically tampered with.
I take issue with Steve McKnight's claim that it would be pulled because of "facts" that people on FR are afraid to discuss.
Facts are true, discussed or not. Aligations, through investigation are proven true or false.
I can't believe that any news agency would ever allow something like this to be transmitted. An unnamed source, and the reporter apparently uses his/her psychic powers to divine what said source really meant.
This clown must have passed New York Times Whole-Cloth Journalism 101 with an A+.
"Woman on CBS News right now: "Alligators were eating people.."
Hopefully it was the mayor.
My guess is the trial lawyers will soon outnumber the "refugees" at the Astrodome. The race pimps are probably putting together a shakedown that'll make the reparations scam look like chump change.
LOL!!!!
Well, then, the PETA people will be all over the Bush Administration for allowing Alligators to eat things that are unhealthy for them.
"and he jumped up on the truck's windscreen and they shot him dead."
Do black people in New Orleans call a windshield a "windscreen?" Something is wrong about this.
LOL! I missed that...:)
Hehe, fill in the "Reuter Blanks"...
Im gonna call BS on this article....no evidence whatsoever. Kinda like the congressman who said that Blacks were eating corpses after 4 days.
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