Original subtitles

In order to destroy our people, you got to take away their humanity.

It was not all the storm.

They didn't care whatsoever about getting us out of here because it should

have taken that long.

But they were more worried about something else.

I hate to say it, can't protect our property. I don't understand why they're

being even hoarded.

When law enforcement is present, order is expected.

Without it, terror and mayhem can ensue.

I need reinforcements. I need troops, man.

Thousands of newly arrived guardsmen have been ordered to take the city back

from armed looters.

They say that New Orleans was out of control, ruled by thugs.

When they came down there, that's all they found is something.

Hard -working, God -fearing people that just happen to be poor.

Is martial law in effect there? I don't know why that isn't in effect. Well,

martial law is something that's included by the United States Congress.

Well, the martial law comes from the United States Congress. It is a

process. Would you request martial law?

I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans.

The breaking news of this hour, the mayor of New Orleans redeploying 1 ,500

police tonight, he says, taking them off the search for survivors, putting them

instead on the search for looters.

I was in the Hyatt Hotel along with the rest of the executive staff of the

mayor. It was at that point that police chief Kompas came into the room where

the mayor and I were.

He said, I've got a problem.

So the room cleared out.

And the police chief said last night one of our officers was just shot in the

head. New Orleans police officer Kevin Thomas stopped four suspicious men at

this Chevron in the city's West Bank.

Three cooperated, but when he went to frisk the fourth, a bullet from a .45

ripped through his head.

A savage attack that almost took his life.

He had a situation where people were actually shooting at the police. It

the case of Kevin Thomas where he actually got shot in the head.

Chief Kompas knew the officer, and he became very emotional.

That's when the mayor responded to the police chief and said, you do whatever

you need to do to get this back under control.

Tonight, in a rare move, practically unheard of in the United States, martial

law declared.

I told my officer, the rules of engagement are still in effect.

We are not shooting looters. I am not condoned in the use of deadly force,

except if your life is in danger.

I was adamant about that.

But I was one man in one boat.

This was a citywide disaster, you know, and I couldn't be in the minds of 1 ,300

policemen.

I still say today we didn't have a crime problem during Katrina.

We had an evacuation problem. We had a command and control issue. We had

logistic issues.

We had transportation issues to get people out as quick as we could. But it

wasn't a crime problem.

But, boy, we got a lot of troops and police on the street.

We're ready.

Nobody's going to loot this town when you got all these old people in the

building over here fucking dying.

Hello.

There are still an awful lot of problems on the ground. There are still perhaps

thousands of people who are trapped in flooded homes.

Rescue workers have to get out and they have to get to them and bring them back

because by this point, they've got to be running out of food and water.

Good morning. Critical hours ahead in New Orleans. Rescue teams getting back

work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They're trying to save people

trapped in their homes since the storm hit.

It was all about life -saving.

That's it.

To know that you are actually the exact right person for the job and that you

have the perfect training for it, it means it's go time.

But we started to hear that civilians were shooting at the helicopters.

So we were in the middle of hoisting a bunch of people, and we only had like

people in the helicopter.

And they just dropped the bear hook without a rescue device, so I knew that

just for me.

So I clipped in and went up, and then they just shut the door.

And I was like, what's going on? We had basically an empty plane, and there was

like a helicopter crash.

And I was like, oh, my God.

The story was that there was a SWAT police van that had been taken over by

civilians and that they were shooting at the helicopters.

They stopped all rescue operations, and everybody had to land at the Coast Guard

air station.

I got in a call from the White House and said, the boss wanted to know, are

there snipers in New Orleans?

Because if there are, he would airdrop the 82nd Airborne in.

I said, there's no snipers in New Orleans. What people are doing is

shooting to try to get attention.

They said, okay, but if they prove to be there, we're going to send federal

troops and federalize the entire operation.

That would have been a big deal.

That would have put a large contingent of fellow troops in charge of enforcing

the law against the people of New Orleans.

We did not need that.

There wasn't an uprising that needed to be suppressed.

There were people who needed to be helped.

An active force needed to handle the humanitarian side of the disaster.

So now, We were back at the Coast Guard air station, and we were like, oh, my

God, who is it, who is it that crashed?

And then found out it was us.

My helicopter in particular they thought had crashed or got shot

at because nobody had heard from us for hours.

But once we realized that we were the so -called missing party, then word got

back to, you know, the...

powers that be but it took them a while basically our whole fleet

and not just us it was you know other branches and stuff were grounded for

time period when they thought a helicopter had crashed and i had the

and i was just listening to everything going on and i was just like oh my god

we're not gonna get them all yeah it's like we're not gonna get them all

So we were chumpanned a bit because I felt like we were wasting time.

So what I found actually insulting was the stuff about how there wasn't enough

done because of race, when that was the opposite for us. But I know that's not

true for everybody.

My personal experience was that there were helicopters out there, but they

flying more going towards the Lakeview area.

Lakeview is an affluent area with very nice houses, people of higher income.

when you are in the water, in harm's way, and a helicopter is just passing

you, constantly going, and you know where, that

wasn't fair.

That's why I worked on fishing boats, trying to get people out of attics, out

harm's way.

So the storm hit Sunday, and this was Thursday.

And we felt as if the help was coming, but we were having a hard time

understanding why it wasn't there yet.

We did not know that help was being stopped.

We still had a lot of people on rooftops needing to be rescued.

But we knew there would be people who said, I've got a boat, I'm getting out

the water, and I'm saving whoever I can.

And that's all we had for quite a while.

Every day we followed the same path with the boat.

And every house had water up to the roof.

Every house.

You had people who were trapped in the attic, but the tense heat

of the day was overwhelming.

Back up, old boy.

Back up. Back up.

We got him.

I need somebody else.

Yo!

You see, there's a difference in a cry for help and a wailing.

I've heard both.

And you realize that help really isn't on the way.

I saw Eric doing his thing, and he saw me.

And as I was passing, I was like, oh, look, that's Eric. And Eric was like,

look, that's John. I was like, hey, buddy, I can't turn around and chit

with you. I've got to go.

But, no, it was good to see. I couldn't see him doing anything different,

though.

John, I can't say enough about that brother. He could do it all.

I lived in an American can apartment.

It used to be a cannery.

So after the hurricane hit and the flooding, we went door to door.

So many people rolled into their wheelchairs.

And when I closed the door, I looked at my cousin Chris and I said, man, these

people are in trouble.

If we don't have any elevators, these people are going to die in their

apartments.

I said, we got to get them out of here.

Step out on the top of the rooftop of an American can apartment.

I had 170 people in the building.

People were still coming to the building.

Say hello.

So they went to the roof. So I went and I got the fire extinguishers, which was

the powder inside of them, and sprayed out DRP MREs H2O.

That was acronyms they'd be using in the military, so it was just a little

quicker.

The helicopter would fly over us and read the little thing and fly over.

like, oh, they're coming to get us.

But then they flew over me for a couple days, reading my sign on the roof, and

they wasn't trying to do anything.

But I saw them rescue all the white people at the building behind the

camp. I said, man, hopefully I'm not right, but let's get all the black

off the roof, all the white people in the wheelchairs on the top of the roof.

I said, I hope I'm not right. Fifteen minutes later, they gave me what I

Fifteen minutes.

I said, man, I got 60 elderly right now. If we don't get them out of here, it's

going to be a morgue in here.

So they lifted off the roof.

The people who were able to walk around or whatever, I settled them to the bayou

where the helicopters were picking people up.

I didn't do it by myself. I had 12 people that helped me get all this

And I didn't know I was going to have to, like, organize this rescue and make

happen.

I wound up evacuating and helping 244 people get rescued out to American camp.

But when you're in America, and this is supposed to be the greatest country on

the planet, and I'm watching how they're treating their citizens and how they're

not worrying about their citizens, like they're second -class citizens, man, it

was appalling.

After all the stuff I did for this country, and...

For them not to give you food and water because you're black on the roof, man,

that's a hard pill to swallow.

People still inside the Superdome and the situation there is getting very...

,000 according to the federal authorities.

Even as officials work to clear the Superdome and pick up survivors from the

interstates, there are new problems.

The real hell on earth in New Orleans this morning was here at the convention

center, one of the official evacuation sites.

But there are no buses here, and there's no sign they're coming soon. State and

local officials are pointing the finger at Washington and vice versa. I just

want to know why they don't bring new buses. New Orleans mayor issued an

SOS on Thursday for storm victims trapped at the convention center.

Supplies there are running out.

out here that don't have no formula, no water, and they want us to survive out

here. Where's FEMA? Where's the mail?

Somehow the state and government hadn't exposed the fact that when the focus was

on the Superdome, we had an equal number of people at the convention center that

were standing outside.

We first learned at the convention center, we being the federal government

today. I've heard you say during the course of this evening on a number of

interviews, you just found out about it today. Don't you guys watch television?

Don't you guys listen to the radio?

How is it possible that we're getting better intel than you're getting? We had

crew in the air. We were showing live pictures of the people outside of the

convention center. We're feeding those people in the convention center.

But it begs the question, why are you discovering this now? It's five days

FEMA's been on the ground. The head of police says it's been five days that

FEMA's been there. I believe a lot of people outside of the city...

probably combined the convention center and the Superdome into one building,

just not knowing.

Those two terms together, people outside of the city saw

that as one place.

You know, with all due respect, the people in the convention center are

fed. The people in the bridges are being fed. With all due respect, sir, the

people in the convention center are not being fed.

Our reporters, the people in the Superdome, I'm sorry, you're absolutely

correct, were getting the supplies to the convention center now.

We found out much later that as we were telling people in the federal government

that in the Superdome they have food and they have water, at the same time, in

the convention center, there was no food, there was no water. We're finding

wherever we can.

I just finished serving the old folks as best I could for what we had.

I hadn't ate. I hadn't ate in like three days.

You know, we all out there, the whole day that passed by, all the hot sun.

We out there in the hot sun all day, the sun beaming.

This is a federal disaster, not a local one.

First, let me tell you, there have been deliveries of food, water, and medical

supplies to the Superdome, and that's happened almost from the very beginning.

But this is the convention center.

I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who

don't have food and water. No food, no water.

People in here are dying from not eating.

I can't stand it anymore.

I can't stand it. I don't want to go back anymore.

When the police chief was telling me at the convention center, hey, we got all

these thugs down there. What are you talking about?

They say, oh, they're arresting, they're fighting with my cops down there. We

need more troops in here to keep control. We need more police.

So I went down there and they were just like the people at the Superdome,

waiting for somebody to tell them how they were going to evacuate.

These people haven't seen security here at the convention center for four days.

The fear was that they would turn violent, that they would attack supplies

buses. And look at them.

They're sitting peacefully.

They're just waiting for a ride that's taken too long to drive.

I call that the patience of the poor.

I grew up that way.

You learn to wait.

When you're poor in America, you're not free.

And when you're poor, you learn to have patience.

You lose choices when you're poor.

You don't pick where your kids go to school, you don't pick where you live,

you don't pick where you go to the doctor, if you can get to see one.

So many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they

are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are

watching this story unfold.

We didn't have no protection out there, you know. But for some reason, everybody

was kind of calm because of the crisis, you know.

They knew what was going on. They knew right now this is just the time for

survival.

One thing about the poor people from New Orleans, we knew how to survive.

If anything else, we knew how to survive. We knew how to eat. We knew how

you know, we knew how to get food.

We knew how to work.

But we can't survive in water, and we cannot survive in water that's over our

head. You know what I mean? Y 'all got us with that.

Over 4 ,000 National Guard troops were operating in New Orleans today.

More arrived in armored vehicles.

Another 12 ,000 have been ordered to the region.

In simplest of terms, exaggerating conditions on the ground just makes

worse. We believe that we need to free up the National Guard, essentially to do

security in the city.

I think probably the mission that came through the loudest was it's really

messed up down there and you need to go help fix it.

And that's probably not the right mindset of people who should arrive here

should have.

After we got to the Superdome, we were greeted by the National Guard.

And the National Guard wanted to search my daughter, my niece.

They wanted to go inside their bras and their underwear and search this two

-year -old baby and go inside of her pamper to see if we had any weapons to

inside the Superdome and then told me I couldn't bring my dog.

I walked down to the high end, and the clerk at the desk, I was like, here's my

credit card.

Can we just get a room, just one room?

She said, no, ma 'am, the computers are down.

We're on auxiliary electricity, but you can stay.

And they said, anyone with pets, y 'all have to go to, like, the third floor, I

think it was, to the ballroom in the third floor.

I just had surgery, and I had forgotten my medicine.

So by now it's like hours since I've taken a pain pill or anything, and I'm

severe pain. I'm trying not to show it. I'm trying to be strong for them, but

I'm sweating, and I'm shaking, and I'm cold, and I'm hurting.

And my daughter and my niece left the hotel.

And went to, I think they said they went to Walgreens or something. And so they

came back with, like, this big Santa Claus bag full of shampoo and Tylenol.

they were all excited, and they got this bag. Mom, we got you some medicine,

Mom. You're going to be okay, Mom.

We went looting. I was like, oh, my God.

You guys could have been killed. Y 'all could have been shot.

Then they boarded up the hotel, and they weren't letting anybody else in.

And they were, you know, telling us that we had to act accordingly.

And this guy was knocking on the door, and he kept saying, you know, let me in,

let me in. I was already in there.

Let me in.

And the National Guard was saying, sir, do not advance.

We can't let you in here.

Sir, do not advance.

So we had all of this, and I'm like scared to death half of the time. We got

military walking around pointing guns, making folks go to sleep, lay down, move

here, move there, you know, hurry up, hurry up. I said move now, pointing guns

at you, and you're like, okay.

It was a lot.

It was a lot. It kept you so defensive that your body ached from, you know,

wondering, what next? What next? You know, I know something else is going to

happen. What next?

Governor Blanco talked to some of her guys in the National Guard, and she went

out and did a press conference and said, I have one message for these hoodlums.

know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if

necessary, and I expect they will.

I said, Governor, you don't want to tell your troops to shoot people to kill.

That's your people.

Oh, General.

Ma 'am, please, that's not something you ever want to do by any government

elected official, is to tell their troops to shoot civilians.

That will flip our democracy.

We saw what happened at Kent State when troops over some bullshit mission went

out there and shot students on the campus.

I didn't want to be any part of an operation where troops thought they had

blanche to shoot people.

It took four days, but the National Guard finally rolled a relief convoy

downtown New Orleans today. Our job was to protect.

People and evacuate them. That was the priority.

Not protect some store or protect property.

I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an

emergency such as this.

And we struggle at people going loose stores and they're bringing us the

and they're about to kill us.

Then we have nothing.

We need to be very careful when we feel that the tone has shifted.

And if suddenly the mission feels like we're protecting stuff instead

of helping people, we're

probably getting it wrong.

Yeah.

And then the rumble of trucks.

It's clear the rescuers feared the ones that came to help, at least initially.

This was not combat operations. There was nobody shooting at us. But federal

troops had the perception of what they saw from exaggerated report on

that the city was out of control.

Can the National Guard get the city of New Orleans under control?

Violence seems to be everywhere.

Some thugs are even threatening EMS personnel.

We'll have the very latest.

Some of them have been fresh from Iraq, and they knew what the counter -sniper

rule was.

If you've got 10 troops, all of them are pointing in different directions,

looking for the sniper, looking at the ground, looking at eye level, looking on

top of buildings.

And that was a concerning scene when those troops turned the corner from

to Convention Street, pointing their weapons. In many cases, they were

weapons at a place where a lot of ladies with babies and elderly ladies were

standing.

In a disaster, one of the first things you got to do is figure out what rules

you're going to break.

Hey!

Put that weapon down!

The rules, federal officers don't tell the National Guard what to do.

And at that time, we didn't work for the National Guard, and the National Guard

didn't work for us. Put those damn weapons down!

I'm going to tell you again about that!

Get those goddamn weapons down!

Put those weapons down, damn it. Well, you see them doing dumb shit? Yeah, you

tell them what to do, because they do a lot of great stuff.

But if they're doing dumb shit that's not consistent with the mission, which

to take care of the people, then yeah, I tell them what to do.

Put those goddamn weapons in there.

Weapons down!

That guardsman who's in Wisconsin, who's packing their bag and they're preparing

to come to Louisiana, kind of feels like they're going to a war zone.

And they weren't.

But that's the mindset they brought with them, that it was really, really bad

here.

When you're in rescuing people, you don't point guns at them.

By that time, I became somewhat of the de facto voice because I was on the

ground in New Orleans, not in Baton Rouge and not in D .C.

And I knew one of the...

The implied task was to get the storage straight, and I clearly understand our

mission was to save lives.

Hey, tiger.

Hey, tiger, let's go.

Again, the people aren't the problem. The system's the problem.

The lack of systems that took care of all these people was the problem, but

people aren't the problem. Go help the people.

And I think that got lost.

You know, my understanding is that martial law is in effect.

That's what I thought. At this point, we can't protect our own.

Martial law was never enacted in New Orleans.

Van Degen announced that martial law was in effect, but he didn't have the

authority to declare martial law.

And that contributed to a lot of confusion on the ground.

In practice, declaring martial law meant giving the police chief the authority

to do whatever he needed to do. That's my understanding of martial law.

There was rumor that New Orleans was under martial law.

But no one had ever told the police department, hey, we're on the martial

No, that never happened.

But there was rumors about all of that all over the place. So did some officers

believe that? There's a possibility.

There was a lot of opportunities there to do some unsavory things.

But people in integrity don't do that.

I can vouch for my men and women that work for me.

Didn't happen.

Now, you had some policemen.

Probably had unsavory intentions and kind of stepped over the line.

Not just some, you probably had a lot.

It was a Friday evening.

The buses didn't come none through the week, so we thought it was mainly going

to come on Friday.

So it started getting almost dark. Every time...

The people out there would see lights coming down the street. They're thinking

that the bus is coming to take us away.

A call came from down the street. They thought it was a bus. It was a cop car.

And the cop, you know, he rolled back, he rolled past, took his time.

This little guy was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

He was just like, when are they going to send the buses? So the cop, he slowed

down a little bit.

The little guy felt like he was being ignored, right?

So he turned around and walked off. And when he turned around and walked off,

the cop rolled the back window down and stuck his shotgun out the window

and hit the little guy in his back. Bam!

And then the guy just dropped right there. Like, he killed this man in front

all these people.

And the guy's sister was out there. Like, that lady's not going to never be

right. You know what I'm saying? As long as she lives, she's not going to never

be right because she witnessed her brother getting killed for nothing,

find out some information.

Well, I thought that was the coldest thing in the world. Like, the police

killing people, and they're killing people in front of everybody.

So I just felt like, I was like, okay, well, this was going to happen to me. I

thought that was going to happen to me.

I definitely did.

When we knew that there was no food and water at the convention center and the

number of people kept growing and it had reached above 20 ,000 people, the mayor

said, if you're at the convention center, walk.

At least then you know you're walking toward the safety of

others. We found one evacuation route to walk across the Crescent City

Connection, on the overpass, down Highway 90.

As buses come in, you may be able to find some relief.

So we were up on the interstate, and it was hot as hell.

It was unbearable in some situations.

You didn't have access to water.

So my sister and the people we were with decided we were going to go as far down

as we could go. And we walked down, trying to get as close as we could to

algae, to the bridge, the Great New Orleans Bridge.

The only thing we were looking for was to be able to find someplace safe.

But that didn't happen.

By the time the word got to the people at the convention center and they began

to walk across the Mississippi River Bridge, unfortunately, the story of

lawlessness took such a life of its own that good members of law enforcement,

but also emergency personnel and surrounding neighbors turned people

turned good people back from help.

You ready for this? No.

You think this is one of the scariest things you've ever had to do in your

I can honestly say, yeah, it is. When we get to the bridge, it's going to be

fucking scary. We're going to be crossing the Crescent City Connection.

situation is everybody who's stuck on this side of the river without

transportation is in the area that we're going to right now.

Walking, desperate, without food or water. Having eaten in a few days,

drank in a few days.

You know, so it's going to be a pretty desperate situation when we get there.

And I can honestly say I have no qualms about shooting anybody. It's just that

much lawlessness right now.

They'll have no mercy for us. No, we have no feelings.

We will shoot first and follow later. I'll shoot first and ask questions

Right.

We'll have to be picking them off the front.

Here we go.

They have set up a checkpoint at the bottom of this bridge.

This is the bridge that takes you from New Orleans over into Gretna, from

Orleans Parish into Jefferson's Parish. It's the only way out. It's the

connection to the rest of the world. And they've set up a checkpoint, and anyone

who walks up out of that city now is turned around.

You are not allowed to go to Gretna, Louisiana from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Over there, there's hope. Over there, there's electricity.

Over there, there's food and water. But you cannot go from there. The government

will not allow you to do it.

We were not allowed to go across the Mississippi River Bridge, even though

that's still Orleans Parish, which is where our taxes go. We were told we

not go into that part of the city.

They were under the impression that people were just going to want to leave

Orleans to go rob them, which you really wanted to get out of New Orleans so you

could live or survive.

Well, I was here.

This is Algiers. Algiers Park, to be exact.

Algiers is the West Bank.

Well, we really didn't have any water there because it was just like a dry

But they had trees down, you know, and limbs and, you know, stuff in the

and stuff like that. But forest water, they didn't have no water on the west

bank of the river in Algiers.

Well, this is other hurricanes that hit New Orleans. If they don't affect the

west bank, we don't leave, you know, because we can survive.

It don't damage that bad.

You're going to have food in your house. Probably just need water.

Katrina didn't bring no flooding on the West Bank. None.

But Algiers was not safe.

Some of the areas were selling to people, don't come over here.

It wasn't safe at all. It really wasn't.

One of my neighbors came around here, and he came, he was trembling.

Man, what's wrong with you?

He said, man, they tried to kill me.

He said, man, there's some white boys around the corner, and I had to beg them

not to shoot me.

I was down the street, and they said, where you from?

Where you at? Turn around, turn around. I said, hold on, I live right here, in

the next block.

Well, I didn't believe it. I went around there with him.

If you want to call a vigilante, yeah.

Well, we just looked out for everybody.

You had to do what you had to do.

If you had to shoot somebody, you had to shoot somebody.

We shot them.

They were looters.

We tried to shoot to put them down. We didn't try to shoot to kill. Oh, okay.

You killed a number of them. How many did you kill, roughly?

You can't. You can't.

Yeah, I hear you.

It doesn't matter.

They chose to die. That's right.

How do you know they're vigilantes? You see them.

How they patrol around here in trucks.

Four -torred trucks.

Driver and a passenger.

And then two in the back.

With long guns.

And nobody telling them anything.

It was no police.

No police, no army, no National Guard, nobody.

Then they put in a shoot -to -kill curfew, a dust -to -dawn shoot -to

-kill, but there's nobody left.

Young blacks was being killed in this community.

When you hear the gunfire, it's not something I'm just making up. It's out

there. It was great.

It was like pheasant season in South Dakota.

If it moved, you shot it.

I remember that the storm had passed, and we were just, you

know, in Algiers.

With no information.

No food, no water, nothing like that.

The training mean the day my brother left me, that's what it mean to me.

The day my brother left.

Henry Glover was my younger brother.

He was going out to, you know, help his sister and help his family.

You know, to go out and trying to get water and stuff that we need to survive.

I hear my brother -in -law from a distance.

Dirty! That's my nickname, Dirty Reed.

Dirty!

Dirty! The police shot your brother.

I said, they shot my brother? Shot him where?

I go out screaming, running down the street and asking where my brother was.

I found my brother laying in the street, shot.

I knew it was the police when the first time I heard he was shot. My brother -in

-law, that's what he was saying. A police shot your brother.

So when I looked to the left, car coming down the street, so I flagged that car.

I said, man, my brother been shot. Give me some help. Help me. He said, man,

come on, put him in the car.

I heard a gunshot, but I wasn't paying attention. I thought it might be

fireworks. I saw a gentleman.

laying on a manhole, and his brother and his brother -in -law picked him up and

put him in the backseat of my car.

I picked him up.

Blood was hitting the car like it was raining.

Sounded like it was raining.

I told them to bring him to the hospital, and William Tanner told me

school called Haven School where the police had a makeshift substation up

Hannah, the guy we flagged down, he said, man, I know the police is over

They should have a doctor over there.

So we shoot out.

So I can bring him to Haven School because I know two days after the storm,

had medical attention there. They had a truckload of stuff over there. These are

police. So I thought I might get him the help he needs.

Five of them come out, get on the ground.

Get on the ground now.

Get on the ground. I said, we need help.

He shot.

And they started beating us up. Well, they kicked me twice in the stomach and

hit me with an M16 rifle inside my cheek.

He punched me in the face.

Stuck me up.

Put his hand around my throat.

Choked me till my eyes rose in the back of my head. I thought they was going to

kill me.

For them to be beating me, that's when they registered.

These are the people who shot him.

They did take a picture of us. It was with the police handcuffed behind the

police and OPD's car car.

I saw one of them had flares in his pocket, and he drove off with my car.

With him in the back seat.

I told Edward, I don't think I'll see that car again.

Because I figured that when the flares he had in his pocket, he was going to

burn the car up.

His remains was found burnt.

Inside of a car.

People talk about Katrina. I kind of shy away and walk off.

Katrina just a hurricane.

But what they did during that time, that was evil.

Pure evil.

I don't want to remember that.

I'm not a naive person to violence.

But nothing prepared me for what happened after Katrina.

And it's real hard to see when that violence is being inflicted upon

you and you can't defend yourself from it.

That's what happened after Katrina.

At the parish line, the county line of Gretna, they were met with attack dogs

and police officers with machine guns saying, you have to turn back.

So we were up on the bridge, and it became more of a situation where, when

are we going to get out? How are we going to get out?

We're this high in water.

We're glad what we get.

How long you been walking for? About at least three hours. They weren't going to

go in those doggone neighborhoods.

They weren't going to impact those neighborhoods.

Those people were looking to escape, and they cut off the last available exit

route.

Look at my people.

I got two grandchildren, a nephew, another nephew right down we got trying

get the whole post out.

If I stay up here, I'm going to die.

If I go that fucking way and they shoot me now, I'm going to die.

So I'm going to die any fucking way.

You're going to tax me anyway.

But whatever it takes for me to get mine out here, I'm getting the fuck out

here. You heard me?

I wouldn't give a fuck.

I got to go.