BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – It’s been a long, hot summer of pain and grief in Louisiana, its capital city engulfed by a string of tragedies that began with the killing of a black man at the hands of police. Then there followed the retaliatory slayings of three officers and now days of deadly floods.
Baton Rouge, the unassuming neighbor to hard-partying New Orleans of Mardi Gras fame, is enduring its latest turmoil with the catastrophic flooding. But stricken residents of the Baton Rouge area say they’ve seen people pull together – white and black, officers and civilians – in ways that give optimism as the high water begins to recede.
Anger. Sorrow. Vengeful glee. Guilt. Terrence Carter has experienced it all during Baton Rouge’s summer of tribulation. On Thursday, as he walked through the murky water on the floor of his home, Carter said he was experiencing, of all things, hope.
The tragedies began July 7 with the shooting death of a black man at the hands of two white police officers, followed by the July 17 ambush killings of three officers by a black man, and now, the rains that inundated thousands of homes and businesses. There’ve been more than a dozen deaths.
“A couple of weeks ago, it seems like everybody was pulling apart. Now it’s no black and white thing. Everybody’s just got to help everybody to come out of this,” Carter said.