Times-Picayune: The real story of convention center violence and deaths

[Helga Scow Stern]

Monday, September 26, 2005



Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated
Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated

6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center


By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell
Staff writers


After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.


Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies. "I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

More....
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09_26.html#082732

[liberal N proud]

1. 10 bodies between those two places is 10 too many

[Tomee450]

7. I don't think so.

Four of the deceased died of natural causes. There were about thirty thousand people in the Superdome and thousands more at the convention center. Together the population at both cites was the size of a small city. It is not uncommon to have that many deaths in an emergency of that magnitude. The bottom line is that there were lies deliberately told by some to vilify the victims. And unfortunately, too many people were willing to believe the lies.

[Piperay]

2. Perhaps evacuees

made it seem worse in hopes that they would finally get help.

Either that or chimp's gang is now trying to whitewash the whole thing so it doesn't make him look so bad.

[progressoid]

4. Perhaps

Fox, Rush, et. al. wanted to paint poor and/or Black people as criminals.

[tx_dem41]

10. Well...a lot of DUers sure fell for it then. n/t

[progressoid]

14. Completely different version from a refugee on 'This American Life'

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, Denise Moore was trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center, with her mom, her niece and her niece's two-year-old daughter. There she witnessed acts of surprising humanity by armed thugs, taking charge and doing good. (15 minutes)

Realplayer version here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ra/296.ram

Transcript: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/pdf/296.pdf

[Tomee450]

5. It wasn't the evacuees who

were at fault. It was the media who took the report of one or two persons and ran with the story without verifying anything. They continued with the lies even after the FAA stated they had had no reports of helicopters being shot at. Some people readily accepted the lies because they had preconceived notions about black criminality.

[formernaderite]

18. agreed...the media was literally goading them into telling the "worst"

stories possible. If it bleeds it leads...unfortunately. The worst aspect is that their continuation of the rumour probably made life even scarier for the people in the dome and convention center. Afterall can you imagine what you might think after a reporter asks you: "is it true people have been getting killed in the dome?" You're going to feel quite uneasy, and pass the info on.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. Ten is a lot. n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. If Blanco had signed over control to Bush

half of those people would have ended up dead by the time they were done.

[Tomee450]

9. I suspect that the belief

might have been that the victims would riot and that would be an excuse for the guard to come in with great force to subdue the rioters. Reminds me of the riots in Detroit during the sixties. The police went into black neighborhood and shot through windows killing innocent people in their homes.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. All that and more

They were also hoping that contagious diseases would break out. Then they would have had to 'quarantine' the Superdome. Of course that wouldn't have been enough and hordes of crazy, sick, scary black people were going to come to your houses to loot our stuff. We would soon need armed forces to 'protect' our property and that is why Bush is still trying to put the Pentagon in charge.

[Neocondriac]

8. lit and fanned...

these were conjured up by the {BCS} Bush Crime Syndicate. What better way to justify not being responsive ?...They were shooting at us!...BULLSHIT!

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Re: the one 'slain'.

I remember hearing one report of an accused rapist being 'taken care of' by the other citizens -- which is exactly what I would expect. That's why I never believed the outrageous stories; if anyone had been committing the crimes that were reported, the other people there would have rallied to defend themselves and their families.

It just didn't make sense that there were numbers of out-of-control criminals at work, because even they would need to sleep and the first time they fall asleep, they're done for.

[goodhue]

13. 10 is way less than the media and national guard suggested at the time

It is sad the hysteria was picked up and amplified by national guard and media and then used as an excuse to not render timely aid.

[demo dutch]

15. This should get major MSM coverage!!

[leveymg]

16. It was Thevenot, the NO TP reporter, who is largely responsible for

spreading the hideous rumour about National Guardsmen finding the corpses of a 7 year girl with her throat cut and five year old who had been raped.

Thevenot, a Times-Picayune reporter, quoted an Arkansas national guardsman named Mikel Brooks, as the sole source of that horrible account, which was used to justify the slow response to rescue trapped New Orleans residents and the military containment strategy that kept thousands trapped for days. It turns out the most lurid details of Brook's statement were totally false.

[OneBlueSky]

17. what's most disgusting about this is how the NO poor were depicted . . .

as animals out of control, raping and murdering and unable to function as human beings . . . when the fact is that they endured the most despicable kind of indifference and neglect at the hands of those who were supposed to help them with as much grace and dignity as could be mustered in those circumstances . . . the media should be ashamed of themselves -- but of course they have no shame . . .

[annabanana]

19. They had to push this lie..

to keep more people from going in and seeing the truth.. that these people had been abandoned.

They had to push this lie of riots and rapes and violence to justify sending troops in a LAW ENFORCEMENT rather than as relief and rescue.

And they perpetrated this lie to lay the groundwork for martial law with an 'automatic trigger' to "secure the area" in future catastrophic situations..