New Clues in Post-Katrina Shooting at Algiers Point

How many stories like this will never be told because there is no one to tell the tale? We will never know. From Truthout:

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. He barely survived the shooting, which shredded his internal jugular vein, a key vessel that transports blood from the brain to the heart. He believes the assault was racially motivated.

No one has ever been charged in the incident, but now, more than four years later, at least two figures have come forward with information implicating a neighborhood man in the attack. These two people linked Roland Bourgeois Jr. to the shooting in interviews with ProPublica, the Times-Picayune and PBS' "Frontline."

Click to see FRONTLINE video of Terri Benjamin describing the attack she witnessed.

Terri Benjamin, who lived in the area, said she saw Bourgeois, 47, pledge to shoot anybody with skin "darker than a brown paper bag" while clutching a shotgun. At one point, she said, he held up the blood-drenched baseball cap of a man who'd just been shot.

Bourgeois' mother, Pam Pitre, said her son did fire his shotgun at an African-American man that day in Algiers Point, and acknowledged that he kept the man's hat. Pitre, who insists her son "is not a racist," said Bourgeois was accompanied by another man who also fired shots.

Herrington, whose story closely tracks with the accounts of Pitre and Benjamin, lost his navy blue baseball cap when he was shot. After viewing a photo of Bourgeois, Herrington identified the man as one of his attackers. Bourgeois, he said, "definitely was one of the guys I saw that day. … I definitely remember him. He was one of 'em."

Bourgeois, who has not been charged with any crime, declined to be interviewed.

"Anyone darker than a brown paper bag." Anybody wanna bet that ol' Bourgeois is a Teabagger? I'm just sayin'.
Click the link above for the rest of this sickening story.

More later.
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