Body of young woman shot behind the ear lays on street for days after Katrina
Published: Sunday, August 29, 2010, 8:00 AM Updated: Sunday, August 29, 2010, 3:35 PM
Five years ago, Marie Latino was shot in the head as Hurricane Katrina barrelled into New Orleans.
‘She was beautiful,’ Pauline Latino says of her sister Marie, above, remembering her sister’s hopes of somebody becoming a model. The sisters had been talking about leaving New Orleans, hoping to find a better life.
But the investigation that would normally follow such an event never happened. The circumstances of her death aren’t clear, and whoever killed her never had to answer a question from a detective. Though her death was initially attributed to the storm, it would be more accurate to say that the storm somehow erased her killing. It was as though it never happened.
Latino’s body was discovered on the morning of Aug. 29 on a sidewalk on Danneel Street, a few blocks from her home in Central City. Sometime that morning, a neighbor came to alert her sisters and mother.
The police came too, noting that Latino was near a fallen street light pole, blown down by the storm’s winds. Sixth District Detective Timothy Bruneau checked for vital signs — there were none — and found a large bump behind her right ear, but no other wounds. Later, other officers labeled the case a “29U,” a police code that means an unclassified death, on the theory that Latino’s injuries came from “flying debris” during the storm.
An autopsy wasn’t conducted for more than a month; it was not finalized until the spring of 2006. The pathologist found that Latino died from a gunshot wound, by a bullet that entered her head behind her right ear. But Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard never classified the death, and so New Orleans police never knew it was a likely homicide.
Latino was also never added to the tally of 211 murders committed in New Orleans in 2005.
For Marie’s mother, Helen Latino, the unresolved, unexplored nature of her daughter’s death is an almost daily presence. “It still has been bothering me,” said Helen Latino from her new home in Bossier City. “I think about it just about every day, going on five years.”
Hoping to find a better life
The Latino family lived on Baronne Street. They ended up staying in New Orleans as Katrina approached, having only about $100 among them, recalled Pauline Latino, one of Marie’s two older sisters.
Marie Latino, 20, was just starting out in life. Her son, Marquise, was not quite 2. Marie worked off-and-on as a waitress, her mother said.
“She was beautiful,” Pauline said, remembering her sister’s hopes of somebody becoming a model. The two sisters had been talking about leaving New Orleans, hoping to find a better life. Marie was different, — more social than Pauline; she liked to go out.
That weekend, Marie had left her son with Pauline on Friday and Saturday nights. But she came by on Sunday morning, telling Pauline that they should leave. But Pauline thought they didn’t have enough money, and she didn’t want to head down to the Superdome with everybody else. At times, the decision to stay haunts her.
Before Marie left again, she promised to come back. The rest of the family, Helen, Pauline, the oldest sister, Elizabeth, and their children, gathered at Pauline’s house. The family began to worry. “My older sister kept saying, ‘Where is Marie at?’” Pauline remembered.
Later, they found out from a neighbor that Marie had come by her house Sunday night, just around the block from where she was shot. Marie asked for $5 for cigarettes, but promised the woman she would come back to hunker down for the storm, Pauline said.
The next morning, some women came by and said they had seen a body that looked like Marie. Despite the rain and wind, the family went out to look. No police were there, Pauline said. Pauline and Elizabeth went to the 6th District police station for help, but it was a couple of hours before anybody arrived, she said.
That day, Pauline Latino said she believed her sister had been shot, noting the dried blood in her ears. But a police officer at the scene told Helen he thought she was hit by the downed pole.
In a police report, officers said they canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses, but couldn’t find any.
The coroner never came out to retrieve the body, a fact the NOPD dispatcher that day attributed to the storm. Eventually, one of the police officers at the scene took it upon himself to get Marie’s body to a safer location, wrapping her body in a waterbed mattress he found on the street and putting it into his unmarked vehicle.
The corpse’s journey
The subsequent journey of Marie Latino’s corpse took with that officer, Bruneau, has gotten more attention than the circumstances of her death. It was featured in an article in The New Yorker magazine and, later, in the book “Nine Lives,” both by Dan Baum.
In the article, Bruneau described trying to take Latino’s body to Charity Hospital, but as he arrived, the hospital staff was preparing to evacuate. In an e-mail message, Bruneau told The Times-Picayune that he couldn’t reach University Hospital because of floodwater. At his next stop, Tulane Hospital, medical personnel refused to take the body.
Bruneau kept Marie Latino’s body with him for hours, according to the article, until an NOPD dispatcher advised that he was being ordered to “undo what you did.” He drove back to Central City, and, with remorse, left her body in the 1900 block of Jackson Avenue.
The detective left the police force after the storm, never learning that a pathologist concluded Marie had been shot. Baum said he never sought the autopsy for his book.
‘She was somebody to us’
Marie Latino’s body stayed on Jackson Avenue for several days, even as floodwater encroached. Knowing her body was there, in the elements, was painful, Pauline Latino said. “They just left her like she was nobody, but she was somebody to us,” she said.
On Aug. 31, a helicopter came and picked up the body, Pauline recalled. The family then decided to leave, ending up first in Jacksonville, Fla., before moving on to Houston. They eventually returned to New Orleans, but Helen and Elizabeth Latino, along with Marie’s son, decided to stay in Bossier City after evacuating for Hurricane Gustav.
Marie Latino’s body was identified through DNA, her sister said. The gunshot wound that killed her entered behind her right ear, said Dr. James Traylor, the pathologist.
“It is going to either be suicide or homicide,” Traylor said. The entry point of the wound makes suicide very unlikely, he said. However, Minyard never classified the death, which remains “undetermined,” according to chief investigator John Gagliano.
After coming back to the city, Pauline Latino called a 6th District detective, Armando Asaro, asking him to investigate her sister’s death. She says she never heard back and let it go, concentrating instead on raising her three children and making a new place for herself in New Orleans.
But Pauline Latino cries when she talks about how her sister was declared just a Katrina victim, saying emphatically that she was murdered.
It’s unclear whether more will be done to solve what would now be a very difficult case. After being given the autopsy report by a reporter, NOPD spokesman Bob Young said the homicide division would look into Marie Latino’s death and open a case if it is deemed a murder or homicide. However, he noted, that determination is ultimately up to the coroner.
