Violence in New Orleans 'wildly exaggerated'

David Nason, New York correspondent
September 28, 2005
THE official body count from the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Centre has established that reports of the city being plunged into an orgy of murder, rape and mayhem in the wake of Hurricane Katrina were wildly exaggerated.

An investigation by Louisiana's Times-Picayune newspaper has found that just 10 bodies were recovered from these now notorious venues - six from the Superdome and four from the convention centre.

Murder is believed to be a possibility in just one case.

New Orleans district attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed just four murders in all of New Orleans in the week after Katrina.

For a city with about 200 murders a year, this made it an average week.

The findings are in sharp contrast to the widely reported claims of unchecked African American gang violence at the Superdome and Convention Centre, where 40,000 to 50,000 flood victims had sought safety and shelter.

In many instances, the media reporting of this non-existent carnage was driven by the claims of officials such as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the city's police chief Eddie Compass and Louisiana State Police Henry Whitehorn, as well as the accounts of traumatised residents after they were evacuated.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Mr Compass talked of babies being raped and Mr Nagin said "hundreds of armed gang members" were killing and raping inside the Superdome.

Mr Nagin told Winfrey the crowd had descended to an "almost animalistic state".

The stories continued to be spread by evacuees arriving at emergency shelters set up in places such as San Antonio and Houston in Texas. They will all now make fertile ground for those who study the phenomena of the urban myth.

Even the doctor in charge of removing the bodies was fooled.

He arrived with a refrigerated 18-wheeler semi-trailer and a team of doctors to process what he thought would be 200 bodies.

He could have got away with a nurse and a couple of four-wheel drives.

Of the six who died at the Superdome, four died of natural causes and one from a drug overdose. The sixth jumped to his death in an apparent suicide.

Four other bodies were found in nearby streets but officials are convinced nobody was killed inside the Superdome.

Of the four bodies discovered at the convention centre, only one appeared to have been slain.

Conceding that many of his earlier statements were false, Mr Compass said: "The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible." Asked for the source of the information, Mr Compass said he did not remember.

But Mr Jordan told the Times-Picayune he blamed the media, saying he was outraged at the repeated reports by national media outlets that suffering flood victims - most of them impoverished black people - had turned into savages.

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said.

"They (the national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases. They just accepted what people told them."

Even the shooting of a Louisiana National Guardsman at the Superdome was misreported.

The guardsman was attacked inside a Superdome locker room and accidentally shot himself in the commotion. Officials now believe this was the only shot fired in the Superdome during the whole evacuation period.

A New Orleans SWAT team leader said his 20-man team responded to about 10 reports of shootings at the convention centre and while at the venue heard numerous stories of gang rapes, armed robberies and other violent crimes. But no victims ever came forward.

Rumours of rampant violence prompted Louisiana National Guard Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Thibodeaux to secure the convention centre with 1000 troops in full battle gear on September 2.

Lieutenant-Colonel Thibodeaux told the Times Picayune it took just 20 minutes to secure the building and that the soldiers met no resistance.

He said the soldiers found elderly people and infants without food, water and medicine, and crowds living in filth.

But there was no evidence of any killings, rapes or beatings.

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