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Six-year-old hero of the Katrina evacuation
By Catherine Elsworth (telegraph.com)
Updated: 2005-09-07 09:40 Medical examinations revealed that all the children were well cared for and
healthy. After eating at the rescue headquarters they fell asleep as staff tried
to fathom how they came to be alone. One woman burst into tears at the thought
that they might have been abandoned or rendered hurricane orphans by the storm.
The six-year-old told paramedics that his name was Deamonte Love. He
described his parents and gave them the name of his school and telephone number.
His five-month-old brother's name was Darynael, he said, and two of the other
children were his cousins - Tyreek and Zoria Love. The other three lived in the
same building as him.
That evening a report was received that a woman in a shelter south west of
New Orleans was looking for seven children. But it turned out to be a different
group, alarming rescue workers who began to realise how widespread the problem
could be.
At a Department of Social Services shelter, Deamonte gave more details to
Derrick Robertson, 27, a child mentor, about how his mother had cried as he was
loaded on to the helicopter and how he had promised to look after his brother.
Then late on Saturday, six days after the hurricane,
Deamonte's mother was located in a shelter in San Antonio, Texas, along with
the four mothers of the other five children.
Catrina Williams - at first rescuers refused to believe Deamonte when he told
them his mother's name - had seen her children's pictures on missingkids.com, a
website set up by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. The
next day, a private aircraft took the children to Texas for an emotional
reunion. Mrs Williams, 26, told the newspaper that sheer desperation led her to
hand over the children to rescuers first and agree to wait behind. "We did what
we had to do for our kids, because we love them."
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