VOICES
FROM THE STORM:
PART 2.
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To read Part 1,
click here.
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Voice of Witness is our series of oral histories focused on illuminating human-rights crises around the world. By allowing the victims of social injustice to speak for themselves, each book provides an unadulterated, ground's-eye view of the events, told in the unique and captivating voices of the people closest to the story. Voices From the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath, the second book in the Voice of Witness series, is now available.
Today's excerpt features Dan Bright, a New Orleans native who spent almost nine years in prison for first-degree murder before he was exonerated of the crime and released from prison in 2004. The night before the storm, Bright was arrested and taken to Orleans Parish Prison for dubious misdemeanor charges. The morning of the storm, guards left Bright and his fellow inmates to die in their cells as floodwaters swallowed the building. Those who managed to escape, including Bright, were met by heavily armed guards waiting outside the building, who held the inmates for days on a highway overpass without food or water.
Read an excerpt from his story below. For more information about Voice of Witness, please visit www.voiceofwitness.com.
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Dan Bright.
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I thought, as usual, the storm was gonna turn or wasn't gonna be a big thing 'cause we've always been escaping major hurricanes, so I stuck around.
Saturday night they have this club in the Lake Forest Plaza, and I was going there when I was pulled over. The cop—city police—asked me to get out, asked for my license, ran my name in, and said I had a warrant. He's on duty, but I guess he's doing detail work for this nightclub. He's black. I had a warrant because me and my girlfriend, we had a fuss. My neighbors heard the fuss and they called the police, and they said it was domestic violence. It was a domestic dispute between me and my girlfriend. This was like a week before.
And, at this time, the city was asking them not to bring in misdemeanor charges, but the cop was insisting that they bring me in. I don't know if it was the car I was driving. My car was a '97 Jaguar SJ-6, and it was given to me by my aunt. It was in my aunt's name because we never got the titles. Maybe that was the problem. I know what they thought: either they thought it was stolen or I was a drug dealer. It was one of the two. If a guy is driving a nice car, he better have an Armani suit on, and that's just the way it is. They see you driving a Jag or a Mercedes, they gonna pull you over because it's just New Orleans. They figure if you have that type of car, you have to dress for it.
The bottom line is, he brought me to jail for domestic violence, resisting arrest, and drunk in public. I don't drink. He brought me to jail and that's how I wind up in the predicament I was in for the storm.
Every time I'm around police, I feel like they're watching me, or they recognize me. That's just me. But in order for him to insist on bringing me to jail, he had to know who I was.
When the cop brought me to central lockup, the guard asked him why was he still bringin' in misdemeanors, and he didn't say nothing. He just looked at me and pointed at me and told me, "Go on up." So he left us there. So they didn't have a choice but to arrest me and to book me in. I couldn't get out because the bail bondsman had done left.
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Late, late—maybe early Monday morning—maybe like 4 or 5. Hard wind, very hard wind. Lights went out in the jail. I was on the top floor. We can look out the window. They had these little portholes that you can look out, and see the rain, the wind blowing, and the water starting to rise.
It was early. You can see the water is constantly rising. You gotta remember, we're stuck in these cells. Guys on the first level, on the bottom level—man, they hollerin' and screamin'. No one comes. They were hollering for the guards to come. Begging, pleading. You had guys who had broke windows out, burning sheets and blankets, flagging them to try to get some attention. In fact, helicopters was flying over, and guys was holding blankets out the windows, burning blankets to try to get their attention. And no one came and helped them.
The lights had done went out, so you can imagine being in this water, in the dark with this water constantly rising. Only thing we had to do now is to break out. We wasn't trying to break out just to be breakin' out of jail, we breakin' out to save our lives.
One guy got out. I think it was the tier rep. I don't think they locked the tier rep's cells. The tier rep is the guy who represents the tier. All the complaints go to him and he takes them to the corrections office. His cell was upstairs. He got a mop wringer, and he went to prying the cells open with the steel rods from the wringer. And those cells, they slide backwards and forwards on hinges, so you can also kick on 'em just enough where they can get off the hinges, and you can squeeze out the bottom of 'em. But you still had to kick on this door maybe like two hours and whoever in your cell, your cell partner, he got to help you kick. You take turns. If your ankles don't break, you be all right. But you got to remember you kicking on a steel door. I kick a little while, then he'll kick. You don't want it to come off, you just want it to give way a little bit so you can push it off its hinge and ease up out of it.
It's like a moment of panic. I can't really explain it. The mind is very constructive if your life is in danger. You can basically use anything that's strong to get out. And you gotta remember, it wasn't no five or 10 minutes. It was over a period of hours. When we did it, we saw it working and we just kept doing it.
You got old guys in these cells, too. They couldn't kick on those doors and we couldn't help everybody. In fact, they had an old guy—well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think this guy ever made it, because this guy had a heart attack in there, and he was just laying on the bed not moving. You had a bunch of guys who didn't get out, that we couldn't help.
The police ain't gonna tell you that. They will lie and say that they got everybody out, but they're lying. Now, if you would go in that jail, if they haven't patched those holes up, you would see what I'm talking about. They got holes all through the wall. They hurry up, they tryin' to cover their tracks. Lotta guys drowned in there. They gonna cover all that up.
The rest of us got out Monday night. We didn't see a guard until we got out. When we finally got out, that's where the guards were at, outside. They were sitting there on boats. Just sitting there waiting. They know we were gettin' out.
MORE ABOUT
VOICES FROM THE STORM
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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