Katrina Victim, 73, Gets a Taste of Prison

A 73-year-old woman who was jailed for more than two weeks after authorities accused her of looting was released Friday evening.

Merlene Maten said the first thing she wanted to do was visit her 80-year-old husband.

“I thank God this ordeal is over,” she said after being released from the parish jail. “I did nothing wrong.”

Police in Kenner, a New Orleans suburb, arrested Maten the day after the hurricane on charges of taking $63.50 in goods from a deli. Though Maten had never been in trouble with the law before, her bail was set at $50,000 and she was sent to jail.

Family and eyewitnesses insist Maten’s prison odyssey was unwarranted, contending she only had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat when officers cuffed her in frustration, unable to catch younger people taking food from a nearby store.

Despite intervention from the nation’s largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private lawyer, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get Maten freed.

Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press article, a local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance, setting up a reunion with her family.

“I’m just gonna hug her and say, ‘Mom, I’m so sorry this had to happen,’ ” Maten’s tearful daughter, Elois Short, said soon after getting the news.

Maten must still face the theft charge at a court hearing in October. But the family, armed with several witnesses, intends to prove she was wrongly arrested outside the hotel.

Defense attorney Daniel Becnel, family members and witnesses said police snared Maten in the parking lot of a hotel after floodwaters swamped her New Orleans home. She had paid for her room with a credit card and followed authorities’ instructions to pack extra food, they said.

She was retrieving a piece of sausage from the cooler in her car and planned to grill it so she and her husband, Alfred, could eat, her defenders said. The parking lot was almost a block from the looted store, they said.

“That woman was never, never in that store,” said Naisha Williams, 23, a New Orleans bank security guard who said she witnessed the episode and is distantly related to Maten. “If they want to take it to court, I’m willing to get on the stand and tell them the police [are] wrong. She is totally innocent.”

Police Capt. Steve Carraway said Wednesday that Maten was arrested in the checkout area of a small store next to police headquarters.

The arrest report is short and assigns the value of goods Maten is alleged to have taken at $63.50. The items were not identified.

Christine Bishop, the owner of the Check In Check Out deli, said she was angry that looters had damaged her store, but that she would not want anyone charged with a crime if the person had simply tried to get food to survive. “Especially not a 70-year-old woman,” Bishop said.

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Associated Press writer John Solomon contributed to this report from Washington.