The situation in Houston remains dire, as dams begin overflowing with rains that have already wrought catastrophic damage and swept away thousands of homes, leaving the city’s residents trapped with limited recourse for shelter and no hope for evacuation. Fortunately, a brave journalist like ABC World News Tonight anchor Tom Llamas is entrenched right there on the scene, bearing witness to the many desperate people who are reduced to stealing food from supermarkets, and ensuring their stories get told directly to the cops.
Llamas, who has previously won awards for his coverage of Hurricanes Sandy and Irene, is clearly no stranger to the devastation they can cause or the frenzy they can set off in those who are just struggling to survive within them. But then, he’s also not about to let some people just make off with bread or whatever before it can become waterlogged garbage—not without making a purchase. So when Llamas tweeted he was “witnessing looting right now at a large supermarket in the NE part of Houston,” adding that police were on the scene after having “just discovered a body nearby,” he did his civic duty and immediately informed the police of another dying thing that needed their attention: the public’s respect for corporate property.
“We informed police of the looting and Coast Guard is flying overhead,” Llamas brayed proudly. “Multiple officers now on the scene.”
Still, not everyone appreciated Llamas moving so swiftly to rescue a corporation from not having an accurate inventory for future insurance claims.
In fact, some people have reminded Llamas that the Society of Professional Journalists calls for reporters to “show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage”—or just regular human compassion. Others have pointed out that Llamas was openly admitting to diverting first responder resources, which might otherwise be used for rescuing people stranded in their homes, to making sure no one takes soon-to-be-rotting food. Some have suggested that, in the wake of local authorities declaring that anyone caught looting will face mandatory jail time, disaster victims who are forced to undertake extreme measures to secure survival supplies were essentially being sentenced thanks to nothing more than his own moral grandstanding.
After the backlash, Llamas attempted to “clear this up”—deleting his original tweet, and clarifying that some of the people who had entered the supermarket to steal food amid the worst natural disaster to ever hit Texas had their “faces covered,” presumably to avoid identification by the media and police.
In light of Llamas’ clarification, some have also recommended Tom Llamas wade right into that supermarket, find the largest extant pineapple, and go fuck himself with it—but only after paying for it.
Anyway, be sure to follow Tom Llamas for more hard-hitting investigative stories about people fighting for their lives and where the police can arrest them.