Friday, September 16, 2005

Lock Her Up! 73 Yr Old Grannie Looted Sausage

MSNBC: Police say the grandmother from N.O. took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck. The church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Merlene Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hr away. And the judge who set the stiff $50,000 bail by phone (100 times the maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts) has not returned a wk’s worth of calls, her lawyer said. Maten’s daughter, who works in traffic enforcement for N.O. police, says family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage that was inside a cooler to eat but was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn’t catch younger looters at a store in Kenner, a suburb of N.O. Even the deli owner doesn't want her charged: "There were people looting, but she wasn’t one of them. Instead of chasing after people who were running, they grabbed the diabetic old lady who was walking."
Posted by Tina :: 12:28 AM :: 2 Comments:

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