Looters' caches found all over New Orleans
It was like a modern-day treasure map – a computerised diagram of neighbourhoods with codes marking the addresses where National Guard soldiers came upon caches of goods taken by looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“There’s probably still loot out there hidden in various homes,” Capt. Gregg McGowan said from his Oklahoma National Guard unit’s makeshift headquarters.
In the chaos that followed Katrina’s flooding, looters targeted everything from grocery stores to gun shops to trendy women’s clothing boutiques.
Now that the city is mostly empty of civilians, military patrols making house-to-house checks for remaining residents or the dead are finding some of the hiding places for the stolen goods.
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said he intended to prosecute as many looters as he could.
However, few arrests have been made so far because authorities have been primarily concerned with reaching stranded residents, Jordan said.
