Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center
Let me see if I got this straight. Guardsman Mikel Brooks escorts Times-Picayune staff writer Brian Thevenot into the freezer at the convention center.
Brian Thevenot reports that Brooks tells him that there is a "7-year-old with her throat cut" in the freezer. Apparently, Mr. Thevenot does not see the girl firsthand, and it's not completely clear if Brooks has seen the girl first hand.
Later in the story Thevenot reports that "Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer." But aren't Thevenot and Brooks standing in the freezer when Thevenot writes that Brooks tells him, "Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated?" Doesn't Thevenot see the piles of bodies too? If so why doesn't he just report first hand that there are piles of bodies? What does the Thevenot mean when he writes the that guard "had seen?" Has some ghoul moved them? FEMA maybe?
Then Thevenot recounts the sensational third hand (at least) account that:
"One of the bodies, they said, was a girl they estimated to be 5 years old. Though they could not confirm it, they had heard she was gang-raped."
"There was an old lady that said the little girl had been raped by two or three guys, and that she had told another unit. But they said they couldn't do anything about it with all the people there," Brooks said. "I would have put him in cuffs, stuck him in the freezer and left him there."
I mean is this what passes for journalism now-days? One of the bodies a "they said." Was gang raped by a 2 or 3 men "according" to a nameless old-lady?
I don't know what's more sickening. The possibility that it's true or that someone would print sensational third hand account with even a modicum of fact checking.