Tragedy Takes A Human Face - 3 Bodies Identified In St. Tammany
Submitted:	N.O.V.A. November 2005
Source:		Times Picayune 09-28-2005

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A falling tree killed Gary Hingle, and it wasn't until the next day that
firefighters could retrieve his body from his traumatized relatives. Ralph
Rutledge's sport utility vehicle floated off Interstate 10 as floodwaters
swallowed half of Slidell. And Tommy Kikendall's body ended up near a heap of
debris days after he struggled to survive in his flooded home, where he wrote
a goodbye letter to his wife.

Though the bodies represent only a fraction of the dead pulled from Hurricane
Katrina, the three identifications made public by the St. Tammany Parish
coroner this week put some of the first faces on southeast Louisiana's death
toll. As hundreds of corpses plucked from floodwaters and unearthed from
debris piles lay unidentified at the St. Gabriel morgue, families of the
three men who died in Slidell became part of the initial wave of relatives to
have certainty about their loved ones' fates.

But the knowledge hasn't amounted to an endpoint for most of them, as their
grieving stretches on while the routine processes for handling the dead are
re-established. Two families will wait five weeks to hold funerals, and one
expects to wait many months longer for a burial.

David Hingle knew hours before Katrina's winds even ceased that his brother's
tombstone would read Aug. 29.

Gary Hingle, 51, stayed for the storm at his house on Hunter's Creek Road
north of Slidell with his fiancee, her two children and his brother. When
water began seeping into his enclosed patio at 5 a.m., Hingle woke up his
brother and asked him for help rigging two pumps to bail out the room. They
alternately worked on the equipment and tried to pull large branches away
from the house in the moments they thought it was safe to step outside.

"He was constantly concerned with this one tree," David Hingle said. "He said
if it came down, it would destroy his house. I walked over to the tree and
said, 'This tree is not going anywhere.' I said, 'It's solid. The top of it's
moving, but the trunk is solid.'

"I got about 15 feet away, and I felt the ground tearing all around me. I
stepped to the side, and the tree just missed me."

The uprooted white oak crashed down on Gary Hingle, its mass of branches and
3-foot trunk obscuring him. David Hingle spent almost 10 minutes pulling tree
limbs from the pile and eventually found his brother's face. He tried
desperately to drag him to level ground and start chest compressions to
revive him.

"He was twisted really bad, but I was able to get his chest down a little
bit," he said. "I put my hand under the top of his head to tilt his head to
clear his airways. When I put my hand around the back, I felt the top of his
head open."

Inside the house, Ana Fradera had crouched with her 18-year-old son and 15-
year-old daughter, thinking the crashing tree was going to cave in the roof.
Fradera looked outside and didn't see Gary Hingle, her partner of five years.
David Hingle told her he had died, but Fradera frantically called 911 anyway
to plead with rescuers to try to help him.

At the Emergency Operations Center in Covington, fire department officials
had already determined that toppled trees and wind made responding to the
call impossible.

The family then called David Forsyth, Hingle's business partner of 25 years,
who ran through the storm with his son because he couldn't get to the nearby
house in his car. Forsyth said he pulled his friend's body inside and draped
it in towels. When it became clear that rescue crews wouldn't arrive that
day, David Hingle wrapped his brother's body in plastic sheeting and left it
inside. Slidell firefighters cut through trees blocking Robert Road for
hours, reaching Hingle's house the following morning.

One month and one day after the storm, members of Hingle's family will gather
Friday at Schoen Funeral Home in Covington. Each of them worries that the
massive displacement of residents last month may cause many of Hingle's
friends to miss the opportunity to recount his life - from his childhood in
Gentilly, to his auto repair shop in New Orleans, to his years as a float
lieutenant in the Krewe of Endymion.

And in another hardship brought on by the storm's aftermath, the family won't
drive in a line of cars after the service to pay respects at his final
resting spot. Hingle's body will be stored at a Covington mausoleum until the
keepers of the New Orleans cemetery where his mother is buried start
accepting new caskets. For daughter Lisa Hingle, the news that it might take
six months to bury her father has heaped more despair onto the month's
unending trauma.

"When my grandma passed away, we all went to her grave," she said. "My dad
was talking to her, and it just hit me. I never thought I'd have to go
through this. I'm 20 years old, and I can't handle this. I had my own life to
live, and I wanted my dad to be a part of it."

Rising water on road

The second Katrina victim to be identified in St. Tammany didn't stand a
chance in the floodwaters he was trying to escape on Interstate 10.

By the time Ralph Rutledge, 79, of Marrero tried to head away from Slidell on
Aug. 29, water had already made a river of the road. A truck driver who
stopped before reaching the rushing water near Old Spanish Trail tried to
flag down Rutledge, said Mark Lombard, St. Tammany coroner's investigator.

But Rutledge's vehicle continued, eventually floating off the interstate and
becoming submerged in water. Lombard said police found the SUV two days
later, still packed with all the evacuation necessities Rutledge apparently
piled in before attempting his escape. Investigators made an easy
identification from the stacks of insurance papers and financial records
stuffed inside, next to family photos and keepsakes.

A godson from Florida identified the remains, Lombard said.

A mystery death 

Tommy Kikendall, 42, sent a posthumous message to his family in the form of a
note left in the garage of his New Kingspoint home, where he had attempted to
ride out Katrina's tidal surge.

"He said he wished he would have come with us, and he loved us very much,"
said Ida Kikendall, 40, who evacuated to Jackson, Miss., with her three
children while her husband insisted on staying at their home on Hillary
Drive.

Despite the 5-foot water, Kikendall managed to survive inside his garage and
attic. Muddy footprints dotted an antique car in the days afterward, and the
attic door remained open, his wife said.

Nephew Jason Pearl drove from Mississippi to check on Kikendall two days
after the flooding. He found the man lying on his couch. He was alive, but
didn't look healthy, Ida Kikendall said. His legs and feet were swollen, and
he looked pale.

"My husband told him to leave," she said. "I guess he didn't want him to see
him like that. My nephew told him he would come by the next day to check on
him. But when he went back to check on him, the door was open, and he wasn't
anywhere around."

On Sept. 1, Pearl saw police retrieving a body a few blocks away. He
confirmed that the corpse was Kikendall based on his tattoos, and the
coroner's office checked off its third identification.

Ida Kikendall said no one in her family could make sense of the death or the
perplexing scene her husband left behind. A hatchet sat on a bedside table
next to his abandoned glasses that corrected a nearly blind eye; several
ladders lay in the living room, and a photograph of his daughter riding a
horse was pinned to the wall just above the water line.

Lombard said that although he classified the death as storm-related, the
precise cause remains undetermined while the office awaits toxicology
results.

"We don't understand what went wrong," Ida Kikendall said. "We had found a
bag of clothes by the front door like he wanted to leave or something. We
can't figure anything out. I don't know if he was just sick or hurt or what."

Kikendall's funeral is set Saturday at 2 p.m. at Calgary Baptist Church in
Slidell.

Much work remains

The coroner's office had yet to identify three others who died during the
storm, including a man found dead in a pile of debris on Apple Pie Ridge Road
near U.S. 90 east of Slidell. Lombard said the body, suited in a life jacket,
is likely a man reported missing by a woman whose home is on that street. She
told investigators that a man who was staying in her house slipped away
during the storm surge, while the rest of her group made it to safety.

Two other bodies found in Lake Pontchartrain on Sept. 3 and Sept. 4 carried
far fewer clues.

"We don't have any leads on them at all," Lombard said.

Another 30 to 50 bodies removed from private homes, shelters, nursing homes
and assisted living centers in the days after the storm remain at the
Covington morgue awaiting classification, Lombard said. None experienced
trauma, but he said they likely died after not receiving medications such as
insulin, blood pressure medication and heart medicine.

"We're not sure how we're going to rule those at this point," he said. "We're
trying to determine how many if any were storm-related because of lack of
basic necessities."

The coroner's office has handled another category of Katrina-related deaths,
those who died in the path of falling trees while cleaning up storm debris
well after the hurricane passed through.

Vincent Bertucci, 14, a Ponchatoula High School freshman, died Sept. 16 after
a tree he was cutting in Madisonville crushed his abdomen. Lombard said he
was transported to St. Tammany Parish Hospital and airlifted to Our Lady of
the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge.

Joseph Malisauskas, 40, of Jacksonville, Fla., died Sept. 22 when he tripped
as he was pulling a rope to down a tree, as a co-worker sawed the trunk. He
suffered significant head trauma and was pronounced dead at Lakeview Medical
Center. The locations of the tree-cutting accidents were not released.