Reply #11: This is the part of the article that reall gets me

[gorbal]

Once they reached the shelter, they found teeming crowds and no food, water, medical supplies or buses. A police officer told Freeman to park his mother outside because buses were on the way.

"He told me, 'We'll put her outside so that she can be first in line.' I said 'How long will it be?' He said, 'Maybe an hour. Maybe two,'" Freeman said.

They waited outside in the searing heat for nearly 24 hours before she succumbed on Sept. 1, Freeman said.

"I tried to shake her. I tried to look to see if she was breathing. I checked on her neck. I even tried to push on her chest to get her to come back. I was howling, 'Ma! Ma! Wake up!'" he said.

For four days, Freeman watched over her body before he was ordered at gunpoint to leave her, after buses finally arrived, he said. Another evacuee had given him a poncho, which he lay over his elderly mother, covering her face.

He stayed with her until the end, and then four days after she died. If you just read the first part of the article you might think he just left her.