Talk about bad luck. A Louisiana man is taking a look back on that time he tried to run away from Hurricane Katrina only for his car to run out of gas.
Speaking with People, Shelton Alexander's account has become part of NatGeo's Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time documentary. He ended up filming the hurricane as it hit New Orleans Superdome.
"They say time to heal all wounds, that's not the case," Alexander told the outlet. "Some things are never going to heal. I couldn't breathe. My anxiety was high. I felt like I was about to have a heart attack."
Alexander said that he felt the need to flee from Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Katrina Survivor
"Something in my spirit told me, man, we have to leave," he said. "I remember looking at my mom in the eyes, I said, 'If we stay, we will die together.' When she saw the tears in my eyes, I think that's when she surrendered."
He decided to try to drive to Baton Rouge, but he only had less than a half a tank of gas in his truck and $20 in cash.
"All the gas stations was all locked up," he said. "Even if you had some money, you wasn't going to be able to do nothing with it."
"I did know about the shelter [at the stadium]," he said. "I thought we're in the biggest place in the city. We're in a Superdome. What could go wrong?"
Alexander ended up recording as Hurricane Katrina hit through the stadium and across the city. He continued to document his experiences in the days afterwards as he remained stranded. The National Guard brought MREs but didn't reveal how to use them. A former Marine, Alexander helped his fellow Hurricane Katrina survivors.
"They could have told us to not give the MREs to the children because they have a pack that's a burning mechanism that heats up the food really, really hot," he said. "It could burn you really bad and definitely take out the matches. Nobody did that."
Finally after his ordeal, he and 20 other people crammed into his pickup truck and head for Baton Rouge.
"God wanted me to be there," he says. "He wanted me to tell this story. I just respect all the elements of the spirit world and I hate to be so repetitive about that, but that's what people remind you of about me as they hear me — mention God from the beginning to the film to the end of the film."
