Stay with me, if you will, for this thread while I speak to @aNateScott and try to dispel the myth of the Superdome that he has helped spread that likely contributes to the lack of national attention that #louisiana gets when the state so desperately needs it.

#corona

I’m referencing his article...this one-that is dangerously and irresponsibly written- https://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/08/refuge-of-last-resort-five-days-inside-the-superdome-for-hurricane-katrina

While much of it is fascinating and well documented, included are unsuporrted claims of the most horrible crimes that I realize (as being a long-time resident of Louisiana) are simply rumor. Stories spread by boomers who love to sit around telling salacious gossip over coffee.

You know, the generation before Snopes and before Reddit...the same people who would come home with stories of “their friend’s friends who had just returned from a trip to Mexico with the cutest dog” who turned out to be a pet rat.

I know you know.

Perhaps, I should digress...

During hurricane Katrina, citizens were funneled into the Superdome to escape the rising water. It was awful, I’m sure.

But the main stories to emerge were not ones of human suffering, but rather of human crime.

In @aNateScott’s article,

he mentions the story most famously told of the Superdome events-the rape of a seven year old girl.

I’ve heard it told this way, “My buddy, a guardsman was there and a big, black man walked up to him holding a seven year old girl that he had just raped and said (get ready...)

‘Yeah, I raped her...what are you gonna do about it?’ and my buddy shot him in the face”

Okay.
So this man raped this child, then moved freely about the Superdome and walked right up to a soldier to brag about it?

Can we get a name or report from @aNateScott? Anything?

This is almost as exhausting as the ramblings of “hero” Chris Kyle, who (while he was alive) was able to ruin the reputation of the state’s fine people by spreading his story of having to shoot citizens WHILE PERCHED ATOP THE SUPERDOME JUST AFTER A HURRICANE.

No one saw him.

I remember hearing Kyle on @OpieRadio and thinking, “All this sounds like bullshit.”

His appearance must have caught the attention of a few others. You can read more about it here- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/03/in-the-crosshairs or just use your good sense to know nothing of the sort occurred.

And @GovJVentura was exonerated by a jury of his peers (which means people like you presented with the facts), but #louisiana wasn’t.

The nation still remembers us as the cesspool Kyle had to visit and execute, tho you’ll never meet an eyewitness to this story.

Never happened

So why did @aNateScott leave this in his article? It’s without attribution-just thrown in, almost as tho he saw it with his own eyes.

Can we get Doug and Denise Thornton on the record about the rape to discuss the name and description of the perpetrator? The victim?

When people think of Louisiana during #coronavirus and think about prioritizing us, I fear they think only of this-unsubstantiated rape reporting during a time of unthinkable horror.

WHY ARE THERE NO SOURCES FOR THIS PORTION OF AN OTHERWISE WELL-RESEARCHED PIECE?

It’s absurd.

I have my own issues with crime in NOLA, yet thousand visit daily-unbothered & unafraid. When I last attended Mardi Gras there, I parked my new sports car on the street-it was fine.

And I was fine.

But as I ponder our future and consideration during a time of pandemic, I feel like the light has shone less on us because of the stories of rapes and snipers, chaos and barbarism.

And I think people like @aNateScott are at fault.

The legacy he leaves the state of #Louisiana may be tragically flawed.

And it’s on the Internet forever.