March 29th, 2009 10:34 pm
Mystery surrounds post-Katrina death, and some point to involvement of NOPD officers
By Laura Maggi / New Orleans Times-Picayune
More than three years after Henry Glover died in the days following Hurricane Katrina, investigators for the New Orleans Police Department and the FBI separately are looking into what happened to the 31-year-old man, whose remains were retrieved from a burned car on the Algiers river levee.
Much is at stake: Unnamed New Orleans police officers stand accused by the car's owner of contributing to Glover's death, abusing others who tried to save him and stealing the car before it was destroyed.
The case was brought to the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau and FBI by William Tanner, 41, a maintenance man who tried to save Glover's life after he was shot during chaotic conditions on the fourth day after Katrina hit. Tanner said his efforts on behalf of a complete stranger were stymied by the police officers he asked for help. Instead of offering aid to the wounded man, they left him to bleed to death in the back of Tanner's car, Tanner maintains.
A police officer wearing a tactical uniform eventually drove off in Tanner's Chevy Malibu -- with Glover's body inside, according to Tanner. He said he found the car a couple of months later on the river side of the Mississippi River levee, behind the NOPD's 4th District police station. The car was mired in the batture mud, burned and inoperable, he said.
It's a shocking story, but the details Tanner related about the body's discovery seem generally to jibe with an autopsy by the Orleans Parish coroner's office. Glover's remains, mostly charred bone fragments, fit into five biohazard bags examined by pathologists at the D-MORT autopsy facility in St. Gabriel after the storm, according to the three-page document.
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