New Orleans Man Blames Mayor Cantrell After Being Beat Down in Front of His Family in His Driveway
A New Orleans father shared a recent unfortunate experience in support of recall efforts against Mayor Latoya Cantrell.
Erick Sanchez told WGNO that he was returning home last Wednesday night when he noticed a driver speeding down his street. Sanchez says he motioned for the car to slow down, but the driver continued to accelerate down General Taylor Street.
The father motioned "firmly" for a second time; which got the driver's attention, but not the way Sanchez may have intended.
I motioned more firmly. He stopped his car. At the time, I was getting ready to pull my baby from her car seat. The gentleman came up to me, unprovoked, and started attacking my face.
One minute Sanchez was taking his 3-month-old daughter out of her car seat, and the next he found himself being attacked right outside of his own home.
He told WGNO that he "remained passive" and allowed his body to go limp. He offered more details on the incident in now-deleted tweets, saying that he thought he was seeing his daughter for the last time between the blows to his face.
Naturally, Sanchez's interview and tweets garnered a mixture of reactions from those who echoed his message that New Orleans is unraveling under the leadership of Mayor Latoya Cantrell.
Recall efforts are currently underway and people have been lining up for blocks in some areas of the city to sign their names in an attempt to oust the current New Orleans mayor-so it's not too hard to find someone looking to latch on to any type of Cantrell criticism.
But others feel like Sanchez blaming his unfortunate incident on Cantrell was a reach—especially given the fact that he had equal (or at least some) participation in an incident where it could be argued that both parties were at fault.
Even those who are leading the efforts to get Cantrell recalled cried foul on the reporting of Sanchez's story.
A Twitter account replied to WGNO pointing out that a man who shares the exact same name and looks identical to Sanchez has been part of other stories similar to this one.
Their concern was that he either created or used the situation in an effort to help get Cantrell recalled.
Of course, there were also those who used the situation to crack jokes and point out that Sanchez simply inserted himself into a situation that he could not handle.
Sanchez definitely had a black eye in the WGNO video interview, so if he did fabricate the situation in any way for the sole purpose of recalling Mayor Cantrell I would say that's some pretty intense dedication to the aforementioned "propaganda."
Just yesterday, Mayor Cantrell's office put out the following release, claiming that the recall effort was part of a "Republican-backed maneuver by people with an agenda." Could the administration be alluding to Sanchez or others like him?
And as far as the criticism of WGNO goes, they probably just had this story fall into their lap from a guy who showed up to sign a petition to recall the mayor and is likely just learning about his past at the same time that we are.
But was his driveway beat down really Cantrell's fault? Or, as one Twitter user so eloquently put it, did he just "f*** around and find out?"
I'll leave that up to you to decide.