'The looters, they're like cockroaches'
.......with all due respect to cockroaches, but of course.
Elsewhere, Frans Coppers, 52, who has his own business investigating cargo damage claims for the shipping industry, fled his Garden District home Wednesday after two nights of scaring off thieves with a borrowed handgun.
"I had to leave," he said Thursday. "The last two or three days, the things I've seen, it's absolutely terrifying that people can do the things they're doing. People are stealing things that are absolutely useless to their survival. I could never have imagined the absolute disregard for life or property that's going on."
The day after the hurricane, Coppers said, he drove to check on a friend's house and saw people driving through the streets with pickups full of appliances and electronic equipment. He spent the night on the balcony of his second-floor condominium with the handgun and shouted away thieves trying to break into a restaurant next door.
Coppers said he had no problem getting out of the city.
"There were some groups of people staring at me, but I just held the gun up, and they didn't bother me," he said.
"Can you imagine? I never thought I would have been able to kill someone. It's hard to even say it. But if you're to the point where you have to protect everything you have, your life, I don't know, I might have been able to shoot."