'Times-Pic' Photog McCusker Says Medication Caused Tragic Incident

By: Joe Strupp Three weeks after being arrested during an altercation with New Orleans police in which he asked to be shot and pinned an officer with his car, Times-Picayune photographer John McCusker says he does not remember the incident.

"The whole thing was a blackout, my last memory was taking the [anti-depressant] pills and going to sleep," McCusker, 43, told E&P Tuesday during a phone interview from his New Orleans apartment. "It was my first day of vacation, I was tired, exhausted and just wanted to drop. I took two pills and my next memory was waking up in restraints at Orleans Parish Prison."

McCusker was taken into custody the evening of Aug. 8 after hitting several parked cars and attempting to pin a police officer with his vehicle after cops noticed him driving erratically. During the incident, he reportedly asked police to shoot him, revealing later that he had been distraught because he could not afford to repair his hurricane-damaged home.

Speaking on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, McCusker, who is married and the father of three, says his behavior that night was the result of taking Clonazepam, which is used to control seizures, but also to relieve anxiety. He said the drug had been prescribed as part of depression therapy he had been undergoing, but that he had taken it just once. "I have never taken it before and I will never take it again," he says.

His arrest occurred on the first day of what was to have been a two-week vacation, McCusker said. He had planned to spend some of the time working on a book about jazz legend Kid Ory. But that first day was simply for rest, he says. He took the Clonazepam as prescribed, but it sparked a negative reaction, he contends.

"When I woke up in jail, I thought I had died and gone to hell," said McCusker. "I had no concept of what had happened the night before. I didn't learn what I had done until a week later when I got out of the hospital."

McCusker said he was admitted to New Orleans Adolescent Hospital on Aug. 9, and was released a week later. He recalls at one point in jail being tied down to a bed "in sweltering heat" and having someone described as a doctor asking him about the incident. "He was going on a tirade about the fact that I had injured a police officer," McCusker said. "I was sitting there thinking my life is over, but with no memory of what had happened. There had been a lot of low points in the past year, but this was the lowest."

He says the newspaper has supported him, giving him time off to recuperate. He adds that no criminal charges have been filed by the District Attorney's office, but he is still without a driver's license and has to get the legal situation cleared up soon. He also is grateful for some $20,000 that has been raised by the Friends of the Times-Picayune.

In addition, McCusker is trying to be in touch with the police officer he injured, and remains upset that he harmed him. "The last person I would ever want to hurt is someone who had gone through the same things this past year that I had," McCusker said. "I am trying to reach out to him to make things right."

McCusker adds that any of the officers on the job that night would have had the right to shoot him given the way he acted. "The fact that the police officers were able to show such restraint is remarkable," McCusker said. "Given what this city has gone through they would have been perfectly justified in shooting me."

A veteran photographer, McCusker is also known for his "jazz tours" for tourists in the city.

A year after Katrina, McCusker says the incident with the police was a culmination of difficulties that began after the hurricane all but destroyed his home and sparked a series of problems with finances, depression and family displacement.

"It is still something of this incredible blur," McCusker, a 20-year Times-Picayune veteran said. "It has been a year since I slept in my house. Days have been incredibly long, but in some ways it has just blown by. People here are just trying to get a little extra something to keep going."

McCusker recalled evacuating his home Aug. 27, the Sunday before the hurricane hit last year, with his wife, Johanna Schindler, and their three children. He said the family stayed at the Times-Picayune offices until they were evacuated on Aug. 30.

"Our home was done by 9 o'clock Monday morning," he says of the house they had occupied for 15 years. "It had seven feet of water in it." Once the Times-Picayune staff had reached its west bank offices, McCusker joined a group of 10 staffers who went back into New Orleans to cover the story. His wife, also a Times-Picayune reporter, and their 17-year-old son, went to Baton Rouge with other staffers, while their younger two daughters relocated to Alabama to stay with relatives.

McCusker, like most Times-Picayune employees, worked for the next week out of Baton Rouge. "A week after the storm, I was in sad shape," he said. "I had lost 12 pounds, couldn't sleep and had nightmares, the kind five-year-olds have. I could still function, but I could not concentrate."

Editors gave McCusker 10 days off following the first week after the storm, during which he went to Alabama and visited his family. His children eventually enrolled in schools there, where they stayed until last Christmas, McCusker said. By mid-September, McCusker was back at work and living in a friend's home in an unflooded area of the ninth ward. He has been credited with getting some of the aftermath's most vivid images, even shooting from his kayak.

By the end of 2005, McCusker's family had returned to New Orleans, although his wife had lost her job because she did not report back to the newspaper by its late October deadline. "I had been continuing to work and the kids were going to school," he recalls. "I was having [emotional] trouble, like a lot of other people at the paper."

By May, McCusker said he needed time off and took a two-month leave of absence, entering a three-times weekly cognitive therapy program. "Trying to put the grief and everything that happened behind," he says. "It went well, I returned to work and did pretty good for a couple of weeks."

But he says several things occurred in the weeks after he was back on the job June 20. First, in late July, he found out that he could not pay to renovate his house after the hurricane and flood damage. He says insurance helped pay off a $118,000 mortgage on the home, but he still had to cover some $240,000 in repairs, including $80,000 for a mandatory elevation improvement.

"There is a basic naivete by people on the outside world about what is going on down here," McCusker said about much of the rebuilding situation. He said that even if a house is rebuilt, many neighborhoods lack electricity, services and are still filled with debris. "I still have to look for the whole neighborhood to come back."

Without the repair funds, McCusker says his family remains in an apartment. "We haven't even tried to get a commercial loan because we can't live there," he said of his former neighborhood.

By Aug. 8, McCusker said he was in need of more time off to deal with his problems and took vacation. He says the medication prompted his blackout. Since being released from the hospital two weeks ago, he says he has been in therapy and has been concentrating on getting better.

As for the future, McCusker plans to have his children attend school in New Orleans this fall and he hopes to return to work. "I have found out that even though I have lost so much, I realized what I still have," he said. "Loyal friends, a great family, and this is still one of the greatest cities in the world."