A woman who survived a barrage of police bullets but lost her arm in the shooting testified Monday that she never heard police issue a warning or identify themselves before they opened fire on her family during a deadly encounter on a bridge in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.
Susan Bartholomew, the first witness to testify in the trial of five current or former New Orleans police officers, said she felt bullets piercing her body as she huddled with her husband and teenage daughter behind a concrete barrier. She recalled that her daughter, lying on the ground next to her, tried to shield her body from the hail of gunfire.
"I prayed. I just called to the Lord because I didn't know what else to do," Bartholomew said.
Bartholomew said it wasn't until after the shooting stopped that she realized police officers had shot her, leaving her right arm hanging by just a strip of skin. She said the officers approached them as they lay on the bridge, threatened to kill them and yelled at them to hold up their hands.
"Of course I couldn't because my arm was shot off," she said. "I raised the only hand I had."
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