admin @ Sun, 2006-03-05 09:00
SHREVEPORT (AP) — Three arrests in two days at a shelter for Hurricane Katrina evacuees prompted Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator to renew his efforts to make state and federal officials release information that would allow criminal checks on shelter residents.
Roseanna Audinett, 39, of Metairie and Kelvin Williams, 41, address unknown, were arrested Friday at the shelter because of criminal warrants in California. The list of charges against them was not immediately available.
Audinett’s name was the first on a partial list of shelter tenants sent to Prator by a social service agency. When deputies arrived at the shelter to arrest Audinett, they discovered Williams was her roommate.
“I don’t believe this. This is a minor thing,” said a distressed-looking Audinett as she was led to a deputy’s car in handcuffs. Friends at the shelter said Audinett is nine months pregnant.
Audinett and Williams were taken to Caddo Correctional Center and will soon be extradited to California. Both evacuees came to Louisiana after living in Southern California for several years, and they eventually fled to Shreveport after Hurricane Katrina chased them from the New Orleans area, sheriff’s officials said.
A different list from the same local social service agency also identified one person listed in a Georgia warrant. However, that agency would not extradite the person.
Just a day earlier, however, Shreveport police detectives converged on the shelter to arrest hurricane evacuee Tot Hoang on a charge of forcible rape.
Police said Hoang, 46, and a 19-year-old woman were eating dinner they cooked in a crock pot in one of their rooms at the shelter Wednesday night. When the woman prepared to leave the room, Hoang allegedly grabbed her, shoved her onto the bed and raped her.
Hoang was apprehended by Shreveport police in his room Thursday afternoon and is at Caddo Correctional Center awaiting arraignment. The arrests again drew attention to the difficulties Shreveport authorities are having in identifying exactly who occupies the rooms at the former motel.
More than 100 hurricane evacuees from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s hotel emergency housing program have come to Shreveport since two of the program’s deadlines to find alternative housing passed.
Prator has increased efforts to root out wanted criminals and sex offenders at the shelter, arresting four in the past two weeks. He suggested the numbers would be higher if the parish could obtain more information about the evacuees.
“I’m infuriated with the federal government for withholding federal information and wasting taxpayer money,” the sheriff said.
Col. Bill Croft, head of the Governor’s Housing Task Force, said the state hasn’t been able to get that sort of information — dates of birth and Social Security numbers — from the federal government, which has cited privacy laws in its reluctance to give out that information.
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