{"id":526225,"date":"2010-04-13T10:02:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T14:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12219"},"modified":"2010-04-13T10:28:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T14:28:30","slug":"new-clues-emerge-in-post-katrina-vigilante-shooting-at-algiers-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/526225","title":{"rendered":"New clues emerge in post-Katrina vigilante shooting at Algiers Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"algiers_point.JPG\"<\/a><\/span>by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica<\/a>, and Brendan McCarthy, Times-Picayune<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

Three days after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a ghost
\ntown, somebody shot Donnell Herrington twice in Algiers Point, ripping a
\n hole in his throat.<\/p>\n

Herrington, who is African-American, says he
\n was ambushed by a group of armed white men who attacked without warning
\n or provocation. He barely survived the shooting, which shredded his
\ninternal jugular vein, a key vessel that transports blood from the brain
\n to the heart. He believes the assault was racially motivated.<\/p>\n

No
\n one has ever been charged in the incident, but now, more than four
\nyears later, at least two figures have come forward with information
\nimplicating a neighborhood man in the attack. These two people linked
\nRoland Bourgeois Jr. to the shooting in interviews with ProPublica, the
\nTimes-Picayune and PBS’ “Frontline.”<\/p>\n


\n <\/a> <\/span>Terri Benjamin, who lived in the area,
\nsaid she saw Bourgeois, 47, pledge to shoot anybody with skin “darker
\n than a brown paper bag<\/a><\/span>” while
\nclutching a shotgun. At one point, she said, he held up the
\nblood-drenched baseball cap of a man who’d just been shot.<\/p>\n

Bourgeois’
\n mother, Pam Pitre, said her son did fire his shotgun at an
\nAfrican-American man that day in Algiers Point, and acknowledged that he
\n kept the man’s hat. Pitre, who insists her son “is not a racist,” said
\nBourgeois was accompanied by another man who also fired shots.<\/p>\n

Herrington,
\n whose story closely tracks with the accounts of Pitre and Benjamin,
\nlost his navy blue baseball cap when he was shot. After viewing a photo
\nof Bourgeois, Herrington identified the man as one of his attackers.
\nBourgeois, he said, “definitely was one of the guys I saw that day. … I
\ndefinitely remember him. He was one of ’em.”<\/p>\n

Bourgeois, who has
\nnot been charged with any crime, declined to be interviewed.<\/p>\n

The Herrington
\n shooting<\/a><\/span> is the subject of an
\nongoing probe by U.S. Department of Justice attorneys and FBI agents, who
\n are examining claims<\/a><\/span> that white
\nresidents of Algiers Point attacked African-Americans in a spate of
\nracially motivated violence in the days after Katrina tore through
\nLouisiana. Over the past several months, federal prosecutors have
\nquestioned numerous witnesses about the alleged hate crimes in grand
\njury proceedings.<\/p>\n

At the U.S. Department of Justice, spokesperson
\n Xochitl Hinojosa said she couldn’t comment on the investigation.<\/p>\n

So
\n far, the hate crimes probe has been overshadowed by a sprawling federal investigation of
\n the New Orleans Police Department<\/a><\/span>,
\n an effort that’s snared guilty pleas from three former officers for
\ncrimes committed in the aftermath of the storm. But the accounts of what
\n transpired in Algiers Point may soon force the city to revisit another
\npainful episode from those grim days.<\/p>\n

‘I thought it was
\nover’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The floodwaters that spilled over much of New
\nOrleans didn’t touch Algiers Point.<\/p>\n

Still, the catastrophe
\nprompted the neighborhood’s residents — most of whom are white — to
\ntake action. Within days, a band of 15 to 30 locals had taken up
\nweapons, barricaded the streets with downed trees and debris, and begun
\nregular patrols of the area. Residents say they were trying to keep
\ntheir homes from being overrun by thieves and outlaws.<\/p>\n

“There’s
\nno black and white issue here,” said Clyde Price III, a white man who
\nlived next door to Bourgeois for many years.<\/p>\n

But others,
\nincluding Malik Rahim, the co-founder of the activist group Common
\nGround Relief, who was in Algiers Point in the days after the storm,
\nbelieve the neighborhood militia carried out a series of hate crimes,
\nthreatening and shooting black people who walked into the area.<\/p>\n

Herrington
\n said that the attack on him occurred on Sept. 1, 2005, as he strode
\ntoward the Algiers Point ferry terminal with his cousin, Marcel
\nAlexander, and a friend, Chris Collins.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>As part
\nof a rescue mission called Operation Dunkirk, the U.S. Coast Guard had
\ncreated a makeshift evacuation center at the terminal. Using an array of
\n watercraft, sailors transported thousands of flood victims from St.
\nBernard Parish and East Bank neighborhoods to the ferry terminal; from
\nthere, they were bused out of town.<\/p>\n

Herrington, 33, and his
\ncompanions say they were aiming to get on one of those buses.<\/p>\n

But
\n as the trio approached the intersection of Pelican Avenue and Vallette
\nStreet, a white man pointed a shotgun at Herrington and, without saying a
\n word, squeezed the trigger, according to Herrington. “I thought I was
\nabout to die,” he said. “I thought it was over.”<\/p>\n

The first
\nshotgun blast ripped into his throat, torso and arms. Somehow,
\nHerrington got to his feet and began running. He remembers two more
\narmed men joining the first gunman. As he tried to escape, he says, a
\nsecond blast struck him in the back.<\/p>\n

Both Alexander and Collins
\nwitnessed the shooting — and both also suffered minor gunshot wounds. “I thought Donnell was dead,” recalled Alexander, who backs up his
\ncousin’s account. “I thought that I would never see Donnell no more.”<\/p>\n

Alexander, who was 17, said he and Collins were briefly taken
\nprisoner by a group of about five armed white men, one of whom
\nthreatened to set them on fire. Eventually, though, the men let
\nAlexander and Collins go.<\/p>\n

Bleeding, Herrington staggered to the
\nhome of an African-American couple who drove him to West Jefferson
\nMedical Center, where doctors discovered buckshot in his arms, chest,
\nabdomen and back, X-ray reports show. A cluster of pellets had torn open
\n the internal jugular vein along the right side of his throat, according
\n to medical records and one of Herrington’s surgeons, Dr. Charles
\nThomas. At 3:43 p.m., he underwent surgery to repair the shredded vein.<\/p>\n

Herrington is adamant that he and his companions did nothing to
\nprovoke the incidents. “We were just in the neighborhood for a few
\nminutes,” he said. “We were just passing through.” The only way to the
\nferry terminal from his home, he noted, was through Algiers Point.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Over the course of several interviews,
\nHerrington remembered one last detail about his ordeal: He’d been
\nwearing a navy blue baseball cap bearing the logo of either the New York
\n Yankees or the Detroit Tigers. During the scramble, he said, the hat
\nmust have fallen off his head.<\/p>\n

‘Big-game hunting’<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Terri Benjamin and her aunt, Eudith Rodney, walked along Pelican
\nAvenue that day, the reverberating boom of gunfire echoed through the
\nthick, humid air.<\/p>\n

Fearful, the women began running toward the
\nsafety of Benjamin’s home. As they neared Vallette Street, they
\nencountered a group of armed white men, Benjamin said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Among the men, Benjamin recalled, was Roland Bourgeois Jr., who
\nlived just two doors down on Vallette Street. Bourgeois was gripping a
\nshotgun and celebrating.<\/p>\n

“My neighbor was jumping up and down,
\nhootin’ and hollerin’ like he was big-game hunting and he got the big
\none,” she said. “All of his friends were rallying him on, and they were
\ncheering.”<\/p>\n

A beefy character with a shaved head, Bourgeois
\nscreamed “I got one!” and boasted that he’d shot a “looter,” said
\nBenjamin, who shared her story with a federal grand jury on March 25.<\/p>\n

Before long, she said, another armed man — someone Benjamin didn’t
\nrecognize — showed up with news: The person Bourgeois had shot was
\nwounded but alive a few blocks away.<\/p>\n

According to Benjamin,
\nBourgeois said, “I’m gonna kill that nigger,” and ran, barefoot and
\nshirtless, down the street before turning and jogging out of view.<\/p>\n

Benjamin
\n heard another gunshot.<\/p>\n

Bourgeois ran back to join the group of
\ngun-equipped men standing in the street, she said. “He came back with a
\nbaseball cap that had blood on it. And I knew there was blood on the cap
\n because it ran onto his arm. And he brandished the cap for all of his
\nfriends,” Benjamin said. “Everybody cheered. They were happy for him.”<\/p>\n

Benjamin, who is ethnically mixed — white, Latino and
\nAfrican-American — was waiting for an uncle and cousin, both of whom
\nare African-American, to come to her house. She feared Bourgeois and the
\n other men would attack her relatives.<\/p>\n

“I went to him and asked
\nhim to spare their lives,” Benjamin remembered. “He said, ‘Darlin’, anything
\n coming up that street darker than a brown paper bag<\/a><\/span> is gettin’ shot.'”<\/p>\n

Traumatized,
\nBenjamin moved out of the state after Katrina, but just weeks ago, she
\nmade two trips to the neighborhood, accompanied by a federal prosecutor
\nand an FBI agent who asked her to retrace her steps.<\/p>\n

The
\ninvestigators, she said, were interested in Bourgeois. “They asked me
\nspecifically about him,” Benjamin said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Forrest
\nChristian also questioned her about a “sidekick” of Bourgeois, she said.<\/p>\n

‘Like gang members’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bourgeois may be guilty
\nof poor judgment, but he didn’t commit a hate crime, according to his
\nmother, Pam Pitre.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview, she explained her
\nunderstanding of the shooting her son participated in. Pitre said she’s
\ndiscussed the shooting in detail with Bourgeois, and testified before
\nthe grand jury about it.<\/p>\n

In Pitre’s telling, Bourgeois
\nencountered three dangerous and “arrogant” African-American males who’d
\nbeen trying to break into parked cars, Pitre said. “He said they looked
\nlike gang members to him,” she recalled.<\/p>\n

After the trio of black
\nmen tried to move one of the barricades blocking the street, Bourgeois
\nand another man began shooting at them, said Pitre. “Both men had guns.
\nBoth fired,” she said, adding that she didn’t know the name of the other
\n shooter.<\/p>\n

According to Pitre, the shots were meant to “scare,”
\nnot to kill.<\/p>\n

When the gunfire stopped, Bourgeois “picked up the
\nbaseball cap” that had fallen from the head of one of the shooting
\nvictims, according Pitre, who said her son kept the hat until she
\nconvinced him to get rid of it.<\/p>\n

Pitre says the shooting had
\nnothing to do with skin color. “If they want to say it was a bad
\ndecision — yes, it was. But it wasn’t a hate crime,” she said. “He is
\nnot a racist — and that’s what bothers me more than anything else.”<\/p>\n

Bourgeois
\n was terrified by the lawlessness that followed the storm and flooding,
\nshe said. He was threatened by a group of African-Americans, she said,
\nand “pelted with bottles” in the days before the shooting occurred.<\/p>\n

The
\n only reason the matter came to the attention of federal authorities,
\nPitre maintained, is that “this man Roland shot survived and is telling
\nhis tale.”<\/p>\n

Bourgeois’ family has owned property in Algiers Point
\nfor decades, and around the neighborhood he’s known as a dog lover.
\nAside from a 1992 arrest for possession of marijuana, he has no criminal
\n record in Orleans Parish.<\/p>\n

Civil court records show Bourgeois has
\n at least two children. He is now residing with his mother in
\nMississippi.<\/p>\n

Price, his former neighbor, said Bourgeois has been
\nunfairly tarred as a racist. “Everyone paints a bad picture of him
\nbecause he’s a big, white bald dude and a gun fanatic,” said Price. “They think it was all racism. But it wasn’t.’<\/p>\n

Still, Price
\nacknowledged, Bourgeois has a habit of referring to African-Americans as “niggers.”<\/p>\n

‘A racial statement’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the
\n past year, FBI agents have interviewed Herrington numerous times and
\nhave canvassed the neighborhood, going door-to-door in an effort to
\nlocate witnesses to the shooting. One local who was questioned by agents
\n said they were seeking information about approximately 30 Algiers Point
\n residents.<\/p>\n

At this point, however, it’s unclear whether the
\nprobe will lead to criminal indictments.<\/p>\n

Herrington continues to
\nfeel anger about what happened to him.<\/p>\n

“To me, it was a hate
\ncrime,” he said. “It was a racial statement.” He thinks if his skin was a
\n different hue — if he’d been a “white guy” striding through the
\nneighborhood, en route to the ferry terminal — “it wouldn’t have
\nhappened to me.”<\/p>\n

Editor’s note:<\/strong> The Roland
\nBourgeois Jr. in this story should not be confused with the Metairie,
\nLa., physician of the same name.<\/em><\/p>\n

FRONTLINE Producer
\nOriana Zill de Granados contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Photo of the Algiers Point neighborhood by Muffuletta via Wikipedia<\/a>.)<\/i><\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica, and Brendan McCarthy, Times-Picayune Three days after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a ghost town, somebody shot Donnell Herrington twice in Algiers Point, ripping a hole in his throat. Herrington, who is African-American, says he was ambushed by a group of armed white men who attacked without warning or provocation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5733,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}