Saturday, January 06, 2007

Indie filmmaker Helen Hill killed in New Orleans

NOLA.com reports:

"In the sixth New Orleans murder in less than 24 hours, a woman was killed and her husband shot in their home Thursday about 5:30 a.m., said police, who found the bleeding man kneeling at the door of the couple's Faubourg Marigny home, clutching their 2-year-old son.

"The toddler was not hurt; the husband, 35, underwent surgery at Elmwood/Charity Trauma Center, police said. The woman, 36, was dead at the scene, police said. Friends identified the Marigny couple as Helen Hill, an animator and filmmaker, and Paul Gailiunas, a family doctor."

Click here to read the full story from The Times-Picayune.


Below are more details from the Washington Post:

"Police said both were shot at their front door about 5:30 a.m. Thursday. No other details were available. A friend said family members from Columbia, S.C., were on their way to New Orleans on Thursday after learning of the shooting.

"'They were wonderful people. Two bright spots in New Orleans. They gave us hope that people could live together. And they'd do anything for anybody,' said Sheri Branch, who was taking care of the couple's 2-year-old son while Gailiunas was hospitalized.

"Hill made short films; her experimental animation shorts had been shown at a number of festivals in the United States and Canada.

"Gailiunas, who was in stable condition Thursday, opened a clinic for poor people in the Treme neighborhood in 2004. It was flooded by Katrina a year later."

Click here for the full story from the Post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am going to be politically incorrect and will expect nothing but wrath and acrimony, but here goes.

These two members of God's nobility worked in a community that care as little for them as they cared so very much for them. They were seen by those whom they served as white, rich, privileged, liberal, and having no reason to be in the 9th Ward. And they were, all of these things and it cost them the life of what by all reckoning was a great woman.

I read that no one cares about NOLA. Why pray tell should anyone care? Honestly. Why should should a father of three in a far and distant place care one iota about a people which so summarily executed one of the best things that ever happened to them (and nearly executed another person, her husband, who was her equal in goodness)? Why? The murder was the work of a sub-human beast, one who could have taken money and jewelry and have been sympathetic to the fact they had a little one with in their arms. Instead, the beast(s) shot Ms, Hill point blank in the face and shot her betrothed three times in a clear attempt at a double murder--just for the hell of it.

Twenty years ago this action would have been shocking. Now, not only did the murder not surprise me, but the reaction, so typically filled with disbelief over its irrationality, did not either. Disrespect is what happens when one mixes two people of so much value to society with an imploding hovel of a place that cares almost as little for humanity as it does for its own inhumanity.

After the tears are dry and the memory of what these two good souls did in NOLA finaly brings back smiles, prepare yourself for post-facto reality. Surviving partner and child will leave NOLA, probably never to return but for a couple of brief visits; the local community will blame an uncaring world; local leaders will fail to look in the mirror and publically admit the disease that festers in their own community; local citizens will publically scream at everyone from Bush to Tony Blair to FOX News while privately wondering how their native sons have turned out to be the personification of evil and filth; talk shows will talk about healing; rich guys will open a new foundation, attract mega donations, and employ more wealthy, priveleged, white, noble-types...all the while no-one on the ground ever airs out what many are thinking--NOLA did not deserve these two and does not deserve one red cent following the execution of Ms. Hill. Money would be better spend on people who despite their poverty remain human and humane.

As tragic a loss as Ms. Hill was to the world, the biggest loss is the thousands of people who will decide to abandon NOLA (and rightfully so) and abandon careers of social service. The more incidents we see like this the more the wealthy and privileged will turn inwards or toward safer and more international projects of aid (can you say Oprah?). In the end, the blame lies 100% with the Ninth Ward...but as per usual, you'll never hear it said.

Anonymous said...

Very well put into words, it's not easy to speak the truth about such disgusting filthy animals that preside in the 9th ward. It't time to put PC aside and say what needs to be said of these filthy disgusting imitations of human beings.