Arrested Aussie tells of hurricane prison horror - Yahoo! News
Arrested Aussie tells of hurricane prison horror - Yahoo! News: "SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian man locked up in New Orleans for being drunk and disorderly has described how guards fled when Hurricane Katrina struck, leaving prisoners trapped in their cells for four days.
Two prisoners in basement cells drowned, Ashley Macdonald told local media, and the rest spent days without food and water in appalling conditions, under constant threat of violence from armed and aggressive inmates.
'There were four days with no food, no water, no toilets, no air-conditioning, no power. The guards just took off and left us,' Macdonald,30, was quoted as saying by the Sunday Telegraph.
'Quite a few times I feared for my life because there are a lot of hardcore criminals there who had a lot of weapons, a lot of home-made knives.
'I saw a bloke get stabbed. They put two prisoners in underground cells and they drowned.'
The authorities only came to the rescue once prisoners began escaping from the flooded jail, the roof of which had been ripped off, he said.
Macdonald was transferred to another jail before being released when tracked down by his parents and Australian consular officials, who had feared that he had been killed in the hurricane."
Two prisoners in basement cells drowned, Ashley Macdonald told local media, and the rest spent days without food and water in appalling conditions, under constant threat of violence from armed and aggressive inmates.
'There were four days with no food, no water, no toilets, no air-conditioning, no power. The guards just took off and left us,' Macdonald,30, was quoted as saying by the Sunday Telegraph.
'Quite a few times I feared for my life because there are a lot of hardcore criminals there who had a lot of weapons, a lot of home-made knives.
'I saw a bloke get stabbed. They put two prisoners in underground cells and they drowned.'
The authorities only came to the rescue once prisoners began escaping from the flooded jail, the roof of which had been ripped off, he said.
Macdonald was transferred to another jail before being released when tracked down by his parents and Australian consular officials, who had feared that he had been killed in the hurricane."
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