Helen Hill

(I wanted to re-start my blogging in the new year, but I never wanted to start out with this...)

I'll finally admit it, there is no hope for the city of New Orleans.

Yesterday morning at about 5 am, an aquaintance and fellow filmmaker awoke to some rabid peice of shit using her 2 year old son as a human shield. At some point, the piece of shit started shooting. Her husband was hit three times, once in the hand, forearm, and cheek. She was hit in the neck.

Her name was Helen Hill.

While I can't say that I was good friends with either of them, I can attest to their character. She was one of the nicest and most helpful people I met at any of the film screenings we both showed films. Paul is equally nice, he is a doctor who works in clinics that treat the poor in New Orleans.

I think that I feel so much form them because he and I are basically in the same points in our lives. We're both young, married men raising our first child. I try to put myself in his place and I can't even begin to realisticly think what I would do. I know there would have been one major difference if the encounter took place in my house:

That piece of shit would have met with an armed response.

But could I have taken the shot? I'm a pretty good shot, but I don't think that I could even bring myself to make that shot. An intruder using my son as a shield? I just don't know.

Helen and Paul were compassionate people always looking at how they could help. It's sad to say but that's probably what led to all of this. Myself, I'd sooner let someone I didn't know bleed to death right on my front porch then open the door for them, especially at 5 am.

I think, for me, the nails in Helen's coffin are the last nails in the coffin of the once great city of New Orleans.
Here's a link to the story