I SHOT THE SHERIFF

                                     I SHOT THE SHERIFF!



                                                              KENNETH E. HALL                          10 MAY,  2014                                      OSAKA, JAPAN



THE FOLLOWING IS A TRUE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT. 
NOTHING HAS BEEN CHANGED, OMITTED, OR EMBELLISHED.

It was Sunday, January 7, 1973. I was working a part-time job in the French Quarter in New Orleans while between semesters at college. There were usually a few people in the mail room, but the few workers present that day were elsewhere in the building. It being a Sunday I happily found myself relatively alone.

I had a project to complete, and enjoyed the calm that comes in working on a Sunday. I turned on the little radio that was next to the copier, and the hit song I liked "I Shot the Sheriff" began to play. It was just another day; nothing special. After listening to WTIX, the local Top Ten radio station for a few minutes, I took advantage of not having co-workers dictate what I should listen to, and changed the station to something more to my liking.

Inexplicably, instead of tuning in to the local Country station I often listened to, I turned the dial to WSMB.

Now, I used to listen to that station years before, but over the years it changed to a two-man talk format. I referred to it as the "Baloney Station", or BS for short. Every time I put it on, I'd hear these guys laughing "haw, haw, haw" at their own lame jokes. Be that as it may, it was noise to keep me awake, and I concentrated on my work, tuning out much of the BS.

I did so until one of the guys on the radio said: "Hey, I just got a report of a possible man with a shotgun or rifle around the area of the Howard Johnson's on Loyola."

He got my attention.

"Now, this might just be a hoax or something", he continued, "but just in case, I think it would be a good idea to avoid the area if you don't have business there..."

"Yeah, " chimed in the second DJ, "there will be police in the vicinity to investigate, so it's best to stay out of their way. We're gonna check this out..."

"Well, the New Orleans Fire Department has a report of a fire in the Howard Johnson's hotel, so whatever is going on, I think it's best just to avoid the area."

"I just got another call - this time about shots being fired..."

Things just got interesting.

It was just before 11:00am. For once the station had no chatter, no laughing or dumb jokes. It was eerily quiet. That's never a good sign...when those on a talk radio station find themselves without words.

I stopped the copy machine and quit what I was doing, raised the volume on the radio, and waited. I didn't have to wait long.

"The New Orleans Police Department has confirmed: there is a  shooter or shooters in the area of the Downtown Howard Johnson's on Loyola. Shots have been fired. I repeat: SHOTS HAVE BEEN FIRED! The public has been urged to evacuate the area or to stay indoors until the situation is brought under control..."came the announcement.

I immediately began to notify my coworkers, and after reports of multiple fatalities and serious gunshot injuries, and noting our proximity to the area of the shooting, it was decided to close up and tell everybody to go home.

Being one of the last ones out, I closed the heavy doors on the hundred-plus-year-old historic French Quarter building and locked them, as well as padlocked the huge iron gate out front.

Everybody went home; everybody, that is, except me: I decided to take a look at the area where all the trouble was. The hotel was only 2/3 of a mile away - walking distance, I thought. I say I thought, but it should be obvious that I was not doing much thinking that day, deciding to go into a place of an active shooting.

As I walked the narrow streets of the Vieux Carré towards the Central Business District, I noticed there were no tourists out strolling. NONE. First time I ever saw that.

I quickly arrived at Canal Street, the city's main drag. Instead of approaching from Loyola Avenue, and Duncan Plaza where the shots were being fired, I decided to go around the back of the hotel area via a side street. It was deserted, and I walked quickly.

Shortly, the uppermost part of the hotel loomed before me, but I obviously had no sense of danger - or to state it better, I had no sense! I continued on toward Loyola Avenue.

Suddenly I heard a "CRACK!" come from atop the building, followed immediately by a loud "PING!" as a high-power rifle bulled ricoched onto the sidewalk just across the little street where I was!

SOMEONE JUST SHOT AT ME!!!!

I ducked into the immediate safety of a back street, then continued on to Loyola. What a scene met my view!! There must have been thousands of people standing around as if  a parade was coming, only today there was no parade.

I melted into the crowd and got a great view of the hotel. The air was tense, indeed. Everybody was looking toward the top of the Howard Johnson's.

What was taking place here was an act of deliberate mass-murder. A man named Mark Essex, a Black Panther, had entered the hotel and began to shoot people with intent to kill them.

He told three black workers there to leave - that he was out to kill white people - making this a blatantly racist incident of the first magnitude.

A New Orleans Fire Department hook & ladder was in front of the hotel, its ultra-long ladder extending to one of the upper floors. But the truck  was unmanned, now - abandoned at the scene. The FIREMEN had even been shot at!

After killing several innocent civilians, Mark Essex turned his attention - and his guns - onto firemen who came to extinguish a blaze Essex himself set, and onto New Orleans police officers who had been sent to subdue or neutralize him.
                             


By nightfall, Essex had holed up in a bunker on the hotel rooftop. From that vantage point he commanded a wide view, and with his rifle, it was a view to die for.

I remained imbedded in the crowd, perceiving safety in numbers, waiting for something to happen, and things were relatively quiet for a few hours. I did not see many police, and I certainly did not see any police with guns. But suddenly, from all around me, the roar of  perhaps two dozen or more automatic weapons surrounded me, as police opened up on the bunker.

We all scattered, most diving to the ground or pavement.  Fearing stray bullets and retaliatory fire,  I sought shelter beneath a car, and was quickly joined by several others.

Then, much to our chagrin and dismay, the car started and began to back up!!!

 We all shouted and pounded on the car's undercarriage, and the driver, fortunately for us, stopped all motion and turned off his motor. The guns fell silent.

The intention of the police was to either kill or dislodge Essex, but the attempt failed to do either. In my view, they just made a pile of noise and wasted a lot of ammo! It was clear this sniper was hunkered down for the long haul.

After this, all became quiet again, relatively speaking. The crowd slowly emerged from gutters and garbage cans, and milled around, restlessly.
                   
A foggy day turned into a foggy night. It had been awhile since the shooter fired his weapon or was fired upon. We figured with all that gunfire earlier,  the man must have been killed.

I had by this time decided to go home and see what else transpires on TV. In fact, I was in the process of heading to the bus stop when I heard a strange, low hum come from the hotel. The hum grew louder, and more staccato. Then there came a glow, coming from atop the hotel - a glow that got brighter as the strange, low, pulsating sound increased.

Then, from out of the fog, in the air directly behind the hotel, appeared a huge Marine helicopter.

The game had changed.

We watched in awe as this giant 7CH-46 Marine Corps helicopter flew over the hotel, hovered there, and then opened fire with CANON!! It was intense!

"DUNGG!  DUNGG!  DUNGG! DUNGG!" went the cannon as it blasted the bunker.

I recall thinking: "Can this be REAL?? I'm in my own country - in my home town where I grew up - watching a hotel being STRAFED by a Marine chopper!!  It was surreal. The copter hovered overhead for quite some time, pounding the bunker with it withering fire. The attack soon enough drew to a close. Then,  like some fierce, marauding dragon, the mighty helicopter vanished back into the mists from whence it came, and once again things got back to this state of apprehension that passed then for normality.
                   
Exhausted and hungry, I decided it was time to go to home. I had seen my fill, and tomorrow would be another day.
_________________________________

Tomorrow did indeed come for me. Those who were killed did not have the pleasure of seeing another day, thanks to a man who detested them simply for the color if their skin.
                         
In the end, this mass-murderer did not die doing life without parole in a State Penitentiary, nor did he die in an electric chair, with a final meal, a "sad-faced Padre," and perhaps some last words. Out-gunned and outnumbered, surrounded by police, in desperation, he bolted from his bunker hideout early that morning. The Marine helecopter was waiting above, the guns once again blazed, and filled his body with lead and holes. He was most assuredly dead.

Few, if any, cried for him, yet there were tears aplenty for his victims.

I returned to work and school. The city of New Orleans buried its dead  - including Mark Essex - and soon enough went back to the way things were ---  before the monster walked among us.

That little radio went on playing those same songs, but every time I hear that one song - "I Shot the Sheriff" - I think about the terrible events on that foggy day in early January.

 Not all memories are pleasant.

The Times-Picayune newspaper reports:
"In a 10-hour siege on Jan. 7, 1973, Mark Essex, 23, holed up in the downtown Howard Johnson Hotel on Loyola Avenue and killed seven people, including the No. 2 man in the New Orleans Police Department. Horror gripped the city; no one was sure whether the sniper was part of a broader militant uprising. Memories of the urban unrest of the 1960s were still fresh, and police had already been through a standoff with members of the radical Black Panther Party."


The events of that January day were but a continuation of years of lynchings, shootings, bombings, cross-burnings and other terrorist attacks against innocent black people by whites throughout the United States over the century since the Civil War supposedly freed the slaves. Few whites stood up to decry those events, but once white Americans received the bitter taste of racial hatred themselves, many began to see that ALL forms of racism is wrong.

Sadly, the lessons of that day fell on deaf ears and eyes for many others. Racist attacks, large and small, have occured not just in the United States, but also in other parts of the world. Ethnic cleansing and genocidal attacks have occurred later in Bosnia, and Rwanda, and elsewhere, making what occurred in New Orleans pale in comparison. This day was forgotten. Too many other people have died.

Later, Duncan Plaza in New Orleans was renamed Sirgo Plaza, in honor of one of the police victims of the shooting, and a bronze marker commemorates this.  Perhaps the question asked by Rodney King should be inscribed at the bottom of this: "Can't we all just get along?"

____________________________
For further reading, please see articles on the subject:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Essex

http://www.nola.com/175years/index.ssf/2011/12/1973_mark_essex_the_howard_joh.html