By Carla St. Louis
The two youngest fatalities of Superstorm Sandy were discovered 100 feet apart after their mother, Glenda Moore was denied help in her own Staten Island neighborhood.
During the flood, a dripping wet Moore knocked on doors in her neighborhood, begging for help in an attempt to orchestrate a search team for her missing sons who were swept away by the water.
While the majority of her neighbors had already evacuated, some were still at home. Of the remaining neighbors she asked for assistance in searching for her sons they either chose to ignore her cries by turning off their lights or refuted her plea with, ‘I don’t know you. I’m not going to help you.’
They answered the door and said, ‘I don’t know you. I’m not going to help you,'” recounted Moore’s unidentified sister. “My sister’s like 5-foot-3, 130 pounds. She looks like a little girl. She’s going to come to you and you’re going to slam the door in her face and say, ‘I don’t know you, I can’t help you’?'”
While the storm crashed waves of water, Moore’s vehicle became stuck. By than the water level had risen, and fearing that her car would become entirely submerged in the flood, opened her door to escape with her children. Upon escaping, she lost gripping of both boys, and they were swept away. She managed to swim to safety.
“The waves just came and started crashing on the car,” said her sister. “She said she got shoved, and then the wave just took the car and flipped it over. She was knocked down.”
She continued:
“She was holding onto them, and the waves just kept coming and crashing and they were under,” the mother’s sister told the Daily News at her home. “It went over their heads … She had them in her arms, and a wave came and swept them out of her arms.”
Police said Moore told them she eventually gave up after no one helped, spending the night trying to shield herself from the storm on the front porch of an empty home.
The 39-year-old mother had driven from her flooded home toward her sister’s house in Brooklyn when her car became stuck about 6:10 p.m. Monday, according to authorities.
Police said she flagged down an emergency vehicle about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday and authorities began their search.
The search continued in the days that followed, with emergency personnel scouring Staten Island’s marshland. The bodies were found about 100 feet from each other at the end of a dead end street.
And Moore’s cousin, Nancy Jean, told a reporter:
“I can’t believe the way she was treated by the people she went to for help,” she said.
“The first person [door] she knocked on, she begged them and said: “Please call 911.”
“They told her: ‘I don’t know you’ and closed the door. She tried another door but they turned the lights off.”
According to the 2010 Census, Staten Island is 64% white.
Her sons were two-years-old Brandon Moore, and four-years-old Connor Moore.
Source: Colorlines, AP, NYDN via Jezebel
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