The woman left dead in street for five full days (New Zealand story on NO)

[icymist]

The woman left dead in street for five full days

07.09.05
By Andrew Buncombe


However Vera Smith may have lived her life, one thing was certain. In death, she had no dignity.

Killed in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, her body lay under a tarpaulin at the junction of Magazine St and Jackson Ave for five full days. Not her friends, her grieving husband, not her neighbours could persuade the authorities to take her corpse away.

<snip>

"She had gone out to the shop to get something. We knew it was going to close. We did not want to run out of anything," Vera's husband, Max Keene, 59, said yesterday outside the couple's humble rented home in the neighbourhood known as Irish Channel.

"I did not know what had happened to her. A guy came round to say she was lying by the side of the road with a piece of cardboard over her. It was me that went and put the tarp over her.
(More)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10344371

[gademocrat7]

1. Tragic

How utterly sad for her family. What has this country spiraled into?