Evacuee family found dead in Texas

[Judi Lynn]

Evacuee family found dead in Texas
Police: Trio may be victims of double murder-suicide

Friday, December 30, 2005; Posted: 10:19 p.m. EST (03:19 GMT)
GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) -- A family of three Hurricane Katrina evacuees facing eviction were found dead Friday in their Texas apartment in what appears to be a double murder-suicide, authorities said.

Police were called by the apartment complex to assist in the eviction and discovered the bodies, said police Sgt. Todd Dearing in Grapevine, near Dallas.

Found with gunshot wounds were a 40-year-old man, a 37-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy, all from Louisiana. Police found a shotgun believed to be the weapon, Dearing said.

Police were searching for a 16-year-old daughter they believe was living elsewhere, he said. Names were being withheld until relatives could be notified.
(snip/...)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/30/katrina.shooting.ap/index.html

[billbuckhead]

1. "Police found a shotgun believed to be the weapon"

Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people

[bluerum]

2. The federal response to Katrina has been dismal. FEMA is

crippled. * and his political appointees have gutted the government of what precious little operational effectiveness they had.

[Divernan]

8. Katrina would have challenged FEMA when it was fully staffed & funded

under President Clinton. Katrina was far larger in scope than any disaster FEMA has ever faced in the past. Bush had put FEMA practically on life-support. I know there were 900 unfilled FEMA positions in the DC/headquarters alone, let alone the regional offices & the on-call trained occasional workers. Would that the corrupted media would give half the attention to the tragic deaths of this family that it gave to Schiavo or some missing teenager in Aruba.

[ikojo]

16. Terri Schiavo and the missing teenager in Aruba

were white. Many of the evacuees from Louisiana were black, thus the ability and willingness of the media to ignore their plight to this day.

[pitohui]

43. they were from chalmette, i assume they were white

there was a long article abt this family on nola.com, they came from chalmette, which is part of st. bernard

both white and black have been abandoned

this man had attempted suicide many times, he should have been in hospital rather than in a situation where he could hurt his family


i blame our unwillingness to provide expensive hospital care even to the most suffering victims of mental illness

(yes, their last name was ruiz, but in st. bernard these are not hispanics but there's a long story why many last names are rodriguez, perez, etc. so you cannot assume they were non-white based on the name)

it is a terrible thing that st. bernard parish has been so utterly annihilated but most of the evacuees in my area have a wonderful attitude and an admirable resilience

this was an especially fragile person who should have received more help for his severe clinical depression and multiple suicide attempts a long time ago

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. And sure doesn't help that our govt. has squandered billions in

Iraq. :grr:

[WhiteTara]

3. another tragedy

from the government's inability to help those least of us.

[ikojo]

18. The government has the ability to help the least of us

it doesn't have the WILLINGNESS to help the least of us.

[Delphinus]

19. Excellent point.

You make the difference between the two quite clearly. I need to remember that simple statement because it's shows succinctly what the problem is. Thank you.

[Sydnie]

4. Hey Barb ....

Guess that didn't work out too well for them now, did it?

How sad, for all of us.

[MuseRider]

5. Reminds me of

the Ballad Of Hollis Brown.

Tragic.

[Gloria]

6. How can people who have been evacuated and their lives

turned upside down face eviction?? I listened to the reports of the tsunami survivors on BBC and other shortwave broadcasts--while many still live in tents, they are NOT being evicted....they are waiting for housing, but are being fed and children who can't face seeing the water are getting counseling.

How many of the NOLA evacuees are getting counseling??? I bet a lot fewer than are being threatened with eviction. That's how we treat our citizens--threaten them instead of
helping them. Bill Clinton goes on TV in Aceh and gives them a pep talk...who gives NOLA victims a pep talk??

It's a damned disgrace.

[ikojo]

17. NOLA folks need more than a pep talk...they need

ACTION.

Here in the US people are told to trust in Jesus and the pie in the sky when they die....

[KatyaR]

21. Because this is America, and in America

making a buck is more important than human lives.

I can guarantee that there will never be any more help for most of these people than what they've already received (or not), because in America we're supposed to pull up our bootstraps and take care of ourselves. God forbid anything should ever be so ovewhelming that someone should need some help from an outside source.

You're right, it is a damn disgrace.

[Clara T]

7. This is how the death toll mounts but is unaccounted for

just as in the Invasion of Iraq the majority of deaths occur as an indirect of the war these deaths show us an example of how the structural and institutional devastation causes death in so many forms through many ways and over an extended period of time.

So sad.

[pitohui]

45. that's only a small part of the way

the death toll is just boldly not putting all names on the list, the couple i know that drowned in the london avenue canal breach has not been counted as katrina dead, that's pretty nervy, if you died by drowning, dammit, you should be counted, even if you're over 90

[Catherine Vincent]

9. Sad.

:-(

[uppityperson]

10. very sad

[EFerrari]

11. Let's get this on the front page.

What is the matter with this country. BushCo is a cabal, but what about the rest of us?

:(


:kick:

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

26. K&R

[Greyhound]

27. Done

In answer to your question, I know that I and many others are struggling just to survive, leaving nothing to offer to those in worse straights.

[jobycom]

12. No job, no home, no city to return to. No hope. Bush's America.

[ShockediSay]

13. Great economy

if you're looking at it from the top of the pyramid.

Same was true pre civil war; if you weren't at the bottom of the pyramid - in the slave class.

[jobycom]

22. Must be. Every quarter we hear how the recovery has finally begun

What I don't understand is how we can be recovering when supposedly the economy has been hot all along... I can't follow the contradictions. I guess I don't love Big Brother enough.

[pitohui]

44. no city, no entire parish!

they were from st. bernard, not just one town or city destroyed, but the entire parish

if you are already hurting, this could put you over the top

[renate]

14. I'm the first to blame * for stuff that goes wrong in this country

but this seems like a personal tragedy that would have happened no matter who was running the country.

Sure, I hold poor leadership responsible for the deaths in New Orleans, but I doubt that FEMA's pathetic response to Katrina is directly responsible for these deaths.

[hippywife]

15. If they hadn't spent so much

on the war and Bush's tax cuts, there would be money to keep these people housed until they could return home. Many of the evacuees are facing what these folks are because there are no funds and little hope that some of what was destroyed will be repaired so they can return home.

[bluerum]

20. Despair, desperation, hopelessness and abandonment killed these

people. Don't kid yourself. They were treated in a way that convinced them that they were better off dead.

FEMA has been conciously disengaged from helping the people made homeless by Katrina. They made a choice to abandon the weakest and neediest.

Meanwhile, big money contracts for Halliburton and security firms have been free flowing from the * administration.

Now I hear that charter schools are being introduced into the NO school districts. That will displace at least some school board employees and teachers.

[MercutioATC]

25. Maybe they were just messed up...

People kill family members every day...they're not all hurricane evacuees.

[bluerum]

28. Maybe someone should have helped them.

[Judi Lynn]

30. "People" normally don't have police, who are there to evict them,

remove their dead bodies, instead. People who are being evicted normally haven't lost everything in a needless flood following a hurricane, and haven't been sent, penniless, to an unfamiliar city where they know absolutely no one, and have no way to find work.

Most people without means aren't equipped to know how to survive in totally alien surroundings at the drop of a hat while protecting dependents without plans, preparation, accessible financial resources.

[MercutioATC]

33. I'm just suggesting that Katrina was not necessarily a causal factor.

[pitohui]

46. he'd made multiple suicide attempts

but the hurricanes are part of it, he tried again after rita

what gets me, is why take out the wife and son? at least the daughter got away

[MercutioATC]

49. That's kinda my point...

The daughter that "got away" is 16 and emancipated. This sounds more like an ongoing mental health issue than a "Katrina issue" to me.

[pitohui]

50. i'll accept that answer

i posted a link to the full story below

this was an ongoing issue and a failure of our mental health care system which basically we can't afford to hospitalize the sick, even when they are a danger to self or others, in this state, which is broke even tho we provide oil to the nation

it would not technically be a katrina issue in any case but rather a rita issue

rita was the camel that broke the straw back

[MercutioATC]

51. MAYBE Rita was the straw...

Maybe the wife was fed up and told the husband she was leaving him.

Maybe he went off his meds (or was never on them in the first place).

Maybe something else set him off.

...and MAYBE he was despondent about being relocated and kicked out of his apartment...


We'll probably never know. That's my point. There's no proven causal link between FEMA's actions and this event.

[LonelyLRLiberal]

37. Kiss my ass - maybe you should be in their plight. eom

[MercutioATC]

42. A little sensitive, are we?

This happens all of the time. There's absolutely nothing in the article that would suggest that Katrina was a causal factor.

[Bridget Burke]

53. Is it better to be cold & unfeeling than sensitive?

That's the guy's problem! He was just too sensitive to far too many things.

[MercutioATC]

54. No, but there's probably a middle ground somewhere...

His post seemed a little agressive based on the post of mine he was responding to.

[jobycom]

24. Take a drive to New Orleans

Drive through Uptown, Carrolton, then hit the Ninth Ward, even the Lower Ninth Ward. One levee broke on the 17th Street Canal, flooding the New Orleans side, but leaving the Metarie side high and dry. You can drive over the bridge on Veteran's Highway, and move from a thriving, healthy city to complete devestation in thirty yards. In Metarie, traffic is bad, restuarants are full, malls are open. Just over the bridge the stoplights don't work, the houses are vacant, the only cars are tourists, and piles of debris dot the roadside. Thousands of houses sit abandoned. Same thing everywhere. The Ninth Ward is like visiting a post apocolypse city. It is dark and silent, and you have to swerve around the debris to drive past tens of thousands of empty structures.

Thing is, all it would take is money to make these districts livable. Insurance money, FEMA money, the grants Bush promised everyone. While many houses are completely unrecoverable now, many more, perhaps most in some districts, are not. They need to be gutted, re-wired and insulated and sheetrocked or planked, and they would be good. Many of these houses are brick (in uptown and Carrolton, especially), many are made of oak and cypress (cypress is a swamp wood, submersion doesn't harm it). Many are over a century old, and have been flooded before.

But the insurance companies are shafting people, FEMA may as well be on the moon, and none of Bush's promised money has come through. So there is nothing for people to return to--no jobs, no homes, no hope.

All it would take is a little money, and this would be one of the most thriving housing and job markets in the world, overnight. So I do blame Bush for this dispair. His negligence and complete indifference is preventing a recovery that wants to happen. New Orleans is a long way from dead. Just last Tuesday I spent the day there. I ate beignets at Cafe du Monde. I walked down Magazine Street, past the little house/store my mother grew up in. All of that is high, dry and functioning. The city is there. But Bush doesn't want to help. He doesn't want black people moving back to the city, he doesn't want government to pay for anything, he wants to prove his party's ideology by privatizing the whole recovery. And so nothing is getting done. And there is absolutely no reason for it.

For the record, this isn't the first suicide. There have been many. Just the other day a noted documentary filmmaker from New Orleans killed himself, distraught over the city. It's hard to take.

[pfitz59]

29. Billion$ for Iraq!

Million$ for Chalabi alone. NOTHING for New Orleans! What could we accomplish with just one week's worth of Iraqi money! Amazing things! The Bush crime family KILLED New Orleans by their malfeasance and misappropriation! They've gotten away with far too much. Don't let them escape the death of New Orleans!

[jobycom]

34. Yep. Imagine $5 billion a week pumped into NOLA and the MGC.

I'm tired of imagining what the world would be like without Republicans in control. Bring back a Clinton for president. Or a Gore. Hell, at this point I'd welcome Lieberman--no way he could be this bad.

[Bridget Burke]

52. Poor treatment of mental problems is one reason for this tragedy.

Along with the abandonment of NOLA & other parts of the storm battered Gulf Coast.

But there's plenty of money for war.

[JNelson6563]

31. Continuing the horror

The "important" people feel no sense of urgency oon this cause it's just poor people, and most are black to boot so all the more reason not to care as far as they're concerned.

"Culture of life" my ass.

Julie

[brentspeak]

32. It's their fault for not inheriting a fortune

Oh, yeah -- and for living in New Orleans in the first place.

:sarcasm:

[pitohui]

47. they didn't live in orleans, they lived in st. bernard

just a nitpick, i share yr sentiment

[zann725]

35. So they killed themselves rather than be evicted? Or WERE killed?

Either way, I agree...FEMA's response to helping all these hurricane victims is abhoring.

First they displaced them, and isolated them, then evicted them in the middle of the cold winter, during the Holidays. Even Dickens didn't write things THIS glum.

Whatever happened to all those Millions, Billions donated to Red Cross? And WHY did the prior head of Red Cross recently "resign?" I remember immediately after sneeringly asking people to "send cash to the Red Cross," Shrub and Pickles went to meet with head of Red Cross...allegedly to "thank them" for their 'help.'

[Octafish]

36. Babs: They were underpriviliged, so this is working very well for them.

Barbara Bush said that while touring the Astrodome with Poppy.

No wonder her eldest dim son is so uncaring.

BUSH: THEY WERE UNDERPRIVILEGED, SO THIS IS WORKING VERY WELL FOR THEM

From Ryan Parry in New Orleans

BUNGLING Barbara Bush yesterday claimed poverty-stricken refugees who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina are actually better off thanks to the devastating floods.

The 80-year-old former first lady piled more pressure on her under fire son George's administration by declaring that the victims are so happy in their makeshift camps they would rather stay than go back to their impoverished communities.

Her gaffe came after a visit with husband George Snr to the Astrodome stadium in Houston, Texas, where thousands of evacuees from New Orleans and other affected areas are being housed.
Advertisement

Barbara chuckled as she said: "So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston'."

CONTINUED...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15938967&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=so-many-of-the-people-here-were-underprivileged-anyway--so-this-is-working-very-well-for-them----name_page.html

For the record.

Regarding the tragedy in Grapevine. Anyone who hurts an innocent human being intentionally is ill.

The shooter's illness, IMO, was exacerbated by their increasingly percarious circumstances.

EDIT: Added a thought or two.

[Judi Lynn]

38. Isn't that the most ignorant thing ever stated by a former First Idiot?

Why would she imagine people would like to lose their homes, their jobs, possibly loved ones, neighbors, pets, get scattered to the four corners of the country, and live on some chairs in a stadium, with no privacy, no way to rest, no recognizable future, and no peace of mind?

Rich scum MEpublicans couldn't be more disrespectful toward the human race. They'd be doing themselves a large favor to say far less, and let us imagine they're not lunatics.

[ngGale]

39. Christmas combined with PTSD...

Top it off with eviction notice, all these people need help...they feel hopeless. Our country has gone to hell in a hand basket.:cry:

[NJCher]

40. these people could have been helped

It seems pretty clear to me that they were depressed and despondent over being evicted. I doubt many of us can envision what it must be like to see your home go due to flood, endure the experience they possibly had to (were they Superdome refugees?) and then face eviction because of nonpayment. And then to face being out on the streets? It had to be agonizing.

I feel for the child who was not at home. What will happen to her when she discovers her family is gone?

All that money that was spent in Iraq would have purchased new homes for all of these victims. How I'd much rather see my tax dollars go to help out a fellow American instead of the killing and torturing of those in another country.

This is just heartbreaking. There is no other word for it.


Cher

[dryan]

41. These poor people....

were probably just too depressed or were overwhelmed by their situation. God bless them.

[pitohui]

48. the child not at home is emancipated

she's 16 and already emancipated, i suspect she is a survivor but can you imagine getting such terrible news over the holidays? your mother's husband has killed your mother...and your brother...

it is indeed hearthbreaking

link:

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1136099643176420.xml

bottom line, the two adults in this family had severe mental health issues which were never really addressed, it is v. sad